Eleven Things
by Socalledfriend
Summary: Eleven returns, but things don't just go back to the way they were. It's not clear how she managed to get home, and meanwhile Will's sickness is only getting worse. Some things never change though, and while she's back, Mike manages to teach her at least eleven things about the outside world.
1. Prologue: The Wait

_**Prologue: The Wait**_

 _January 7th_

"Will the Wise begins to stagger about uncontrollably, his legs bending beneath him. He feels another presence taking root in his brain…" Mike's voice is hushed and deep, his tone getting exactly the reaction he wanted from his friends.

"Shit. What is it?" Dustin looked frantically at the rest of his party. Will returned a panicked stare.

"We're all already low on hit points, this better not be serious…" Lucas muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"A Mind Flayer has taken control of Will the Wise!" Mike suddenly raised his voice, loud enough to startle but quiet enough to avoid waking his father in the La-Z-Boy upstairs. It was already after nine O'clock, and if his mom hadn't been having dinner with her sister tonight then she would have sent his friends home an hour ago.

"Shit shit shit!" Dustin grabbed the peak of his cap and pulled it down in front of his face. "What are we going to do?" He mumbled through the hat.

"Relax." Lucas said, pulling off Dustin's cap and socking him in the arm. He snatches the dice from the center of the board. "I'll go for an uppercut".

"Ok, you need a 10 or higher…" Mike watched as the dice tumbled across the board, before finally resting on two fives. "It's a hit! The sword cuts through the soft flesh of the Mind Flayer, and blood spurts across the stone chamber" Mike had dipped his had subtly in a glass of water that was by his feet, and he flicked droplets across the table at his friends.

"Ah dude!" Lucas complains, wiping his face with the back of his sleeve. "This is D&D not Sea World!" Dustin was laughing behind him, sitting far enough back to avoid getting sprayed.

"I'm creating an immersive experience" Mike said theatrically, throwing his hands up in the air.

"Is Will the Wise ok?" Lucas asks, returning them to the matters at hand.

"The young warlock collapses onto the cold floor, holding his head between his shaking hands…" Mike allowed a sense of anguish enter his voice.

"But we killed it!" Will looked round at his team mates for help.

"I…I don't think it matters" Dustin was rapidly searching the vast archive of D&D information he had acquired over the years. Only he really rivalled Mike's knowledge as the dungeon master. "Even if the Mind Flayer is dead its spell continues – I'll cast dispel magic!"

After the Mind Flayer's hold from beyond the grave was broken, Mike paused the game, to a chorus of complaints. "Sorry guys, but my Mom will be home soon, and my Dad won't sleep in the La-Z-Boy all night."

"Uh – Mike, that's exactly what he'll do." Dustin spread his arms in a 'duh' gesture, and Mike just rolled his eyes. "I'd bet my Spiderman 200 that he's still there tomorrow morning."

"Look, I don't want Will's mom and Jonathan getting worried – they expected him to call ages ago." Jonathan had taken to demanding that Will called him to get picked up in the car rather than bike home if it was after dark. He glanced at his watch automatically – the one he had lent to El for those crazy few days. He touched the clock face with his finger, remembering their conversation weeks ago. _When the numbers read 3,1,5, meet us under the power lines._

"This sucks." Will muttered half-heartedly. Mike could tell he was secretly glad his family were being over-protective. Ever since he'd come back from the upside down he seemed to always be either skittish or completely quiet, sometimes it seemed like he was barely with them in the room. At that moment Mike realised the irony of the storyline he had written for them tonight – Will had been haunted by a demon even after it was dead and gone. If it wasn't so sad he could have laughed.

He looked at the D&D board in front of them. The campaign had been good so far, he thought. He was finding it harder and harder to be convincing – to make them think he still _cared_ about this stuff. Maybe he'd been a little too enthusiastic this time, over-compensated a bit. He just didn't get find the same joy in this stuff that he used to. He wondered if the others ever felt the same, if they were all just going through the motions, together, pretending things could be like before.

Ten minutes later, Johnathan had arrived for Will, and Dustin and Lucas had headed upstairs to get their bikes and go. Mike picked up a couple of empty soda cans and snack wrappers that littered the basement, then followed up the stairs. He could hear his Mom had just got back, and was talking to Lucas in the hall.

" _Sorry Mrs. Wheeler, we just lost track of time I guess."_

" _That's okay. Did you manage to change Michael's mind about tomorrow?"_ The Snow Ball. Mike paused in the doorway to avoid breaking up their conversation.

" _No, we tried. I think his mind's made up."_

" _Such a shame…"_ He heard the front door close as Lucas slipped out, calling after Dustin to wait up.

He walked slowly back towards the basement. "Michael" his mother stopped him at the door. "I thought we'd talked about this – no more sleeping down there. Your bedroom is upstairs."

"I know. I'm not, I just…left some stuff down there. I'll go back up to bed, I promise." She smiled and pulled him into a hug, kissing the top of his head as he stood rigidly beneath her, waiting patiently to be released.

He slowly descended the wooden steps back downstairs. For the first two weeks after she'd disappeared, he'd slept down here every night. He looked at the blanket fort, carefully reassembled after the government men – the 'bad men' as she had called them – had destroyed it.

He lay down, curling up under a yellow blanket, and checked his watch: 9:59 pm. He reached for his supercom, and switched the channel to 7. The others were always on 6.

"Hi, El."

He spoke softly, the walkie-talkie pressed up close to his face.

"So…today." He began, piecing together what he was going to tell her. "The gym finally opened again for the first time, since, y'know…" He stared up at the sheets above him, the pale light seeping through. He thought about all the nights El had spent down here, alone and still terrified of everything. How she had looked up at him, wide-eyed and trusting, and made him feel like _he_ was the one with superpowers.

"Everything is weirdly…normal. It's fucked. People act like nothing has happened, like nothing has changed." He couldn't hide the contempt in his voice for the other kids at school. They knew nothing.

"Jennifer Hayes asked to sit with Will at lunch" he said, smiling slightly, trying to lighten up. "He could barely speak – it was great. And Dustin fell asleep in English again. Mrs. Broadwater lost her shit."

He rolled over onto his side, facing the wall, and curled up into a ball. He could still smell her on the pillows, he thought. I mean, it was probably just in his head, but he didn't care. Some part of her was still on the sheets, some physical proof that she was real, she was here.

"The campaign went pretty well. They're about two thirds of the way through. They got through the caves of discontent pretty easily, but I have a couple tricks up my sleeve. I might make Lucas fall in love with a Harpy…"

He paused, and imagined the inevitable question she would have asked next, if she'd been there. "It's like half bird, half human. The wings and legs of a bird, but the body and head of a beautiful woman. It sings a sweet song to make you fall in love with it, then it kills you…"

"Anyway. Nancy is still with Steve, for some reason. He's trying really hard to be all friendly with me." Mike sighed. "No way is that happening."

He let his finger off the talk button for a moment, and listened to the faint static. Nothing. He breathed in deeply, and pressed the button back down.

"I…I miss you El." He almost whispered the words. "Wherever you are – if you can hear me – come home. Or just give me a sign, let me know your alive. I _need_ to know that you're okay." He felt his face start to get hot, and his eyes well up. Every time, jeez.

"I'll speak to you tomorrow, same time, ok?" He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to avoid picturing her somewhere, in the dark, alone, unable to hear him.

"Goodnight, El. Over and out." He kept still for a second, trying to hold in a scream, or a sob, or some feeling he couldn't quite identify. Instead he just threw the walkie talkie over his shoulder and across the room, not even looking but hearing the smack as it hit the wooden floor, batteries spilling from the back and rolling aimlessly across the floorboards.

 _January 8_ _th_

"Michael." His mother was looking at him with that concerned face that made him feel a horrible mix of guilt and anger. "It's your last chance to change your mind honey. In a few years' time you'll regret missing out on experiences like this, trust me. I really think you should go." Her hair bobbed slightly as it spoke, but it always returned to the same perfect, carefully hair-sprayed position.

"There was no chance in hell. He had already apologised to his friends. There was just no way he was going to the Snow Ball without El.

She gently lifted a lock of jet hair from in front of his eyes. "Sweetie, I won't force you. But this weekend I want you to really try with Dr. Barnett. I know you don't want to see him, but he's a nice man, and it'll be good for you." Dr. Barnett was a shrink his mom had been begging him to see for a couple of weeks. She finally stopped asking and just booked an appointment. "If you won't talk to me about it, you should talk to him."

It hurt him how wounded she looked, just because he wasn't willing to sit and talk her through every painful feeling that came into his mind. It wouldn't help anyway. "I do talk to you mom. Besides, I'm fine."

"Michael, I'm not blind. You've been so mopey since everything that happened with Will, and you see your friends far less, and you spend so much time in that basement…" She had become annoyingly observant since that week in November, when two of her children managed to lead secret lives right under her nose.

Mike just ignored her, slumping back against the couch and reaching for the hot chocolate he'd left on the side table. She sighed, walking back into the kitchen and muttering something to his dad. He knew he looked like a charity case, sat in his old Star Trek PJs in front of the TV on the night of the big school dance.

He turned back to look at the old Western that was part-way through on the TV. A man dressed all in white had been shot outside the saloon, and blood was seeping from between his fingers as he pressed his hand up to the bullet wound. He switched it off instantly.

He indulged his imagination for a while, and he could see her standing in front of him. He saw them at the Snow Ball, her wearing the same dress they stole off his sister. He saw her eyes looking up at him expectantly, asking if she looked pretty. He always pictured her without the wig – he liked her better that way. The short hair just meant there was less to distract from her face, from those eyes.

Each time he imagined her it got a little harder. He felt niggling self-doubt. What if he was misremembering her? What if she was now a slightly different person, that existed only in his mind, and not the real Eleven? Each day he seemed to get worse at recreating her. It never even occurred to him at the time, but the fact that they never took a photo of her during that week was now agonising.

Xx

"Dude, you have to dance with her." Dustin looked at Will, following his gaze across the gymnasium, where it settled on Jennifer Hayes. "She asked you if you were going tonight. That's basically a girl's way of asking you to take them as a date. You messed that up – but if you go dance with her it might still work." He gave the smaller boy a playful nudge. "You like her, don't you?"

"Yeah, I mean I guess I do…" Will hesitated, refilling his cup with fruit punch. His hands shook a little, spilling sticky liquid over his wrists and the cuff of his shirt. Well, Jonathan's old shirt. He looked up at the room; it was basically just the basketball court but with the baskets taken down and black curtains thrown over the windows. They'd thrown up some silver stars and bad disco lights on the ceiling, but that was about the extent of it.

"Then go talk to her at least! Don't be such a pussy!" Lucas put a hand on his shoulder. "You can do this, man."

Will gulped down the punch in one go and steadied himself, starting to slowly weave his way through the handful of couples who had braved it onto the makeshift dancefloor. Most of the boys and girls were standing in groups around the edges, or were sat on the bleachers. It was the same stupid groups they were in every lunchtime.

"He knows there's no alcohol in that punch, right?" Dustin laughed, watching the seemingly tiny figure of Will make agonisingly slow progress towards her.

"Shit dude she's seen him!" Lucas nudged his friend, as Jennifer seemed to look straight at Will. There was a pause, before Will turned tail, rushing sideways off the dancefloor and out of the double doors that led back into the corridor.

Without saying anything, Lucas and Dustin started after him, almost breaking into a jog.

"Will!" They burst into the boy's bathroom. "You in here, buddy?"

They heard a hacking cough coming from one of the stalls. "You ok in there?"

"I'm…fine…" Will spluttered. "Just give me a minute, ok?"

"I think he's throwing up in there." Lucas whispered as they went back outside. "He's looked really bad since he came back from the upside down."

"You're sure this isn't just because he's nervous?" Dustin raised both eyebrows. "About Jennifer Hayes?"

"I don't know. At least he's here. Between him and Mike, I'm not sure who we should be worried about the most."

Dustin slung an arm over Lucas' shoulder. "It'll get better. They just need some time."

Xx

"El, it's me." Mike settled into the fort, holding the supercom up. His thumb rubbed the scotch tape that now held the cracked battery pack in place. "I know I'm a little early…" he looked at his watch – it was barely 8pm.

"I don't know if you remember, but tonight is the Snow Ball, the cheesy school dance we talked about."

Silence, as always, echoed back at him. He had to do this, and give himself some kind of closure. He had to at least try to pick up the pieces of his life, for his mom, and his friends.

"I've broken my last promise, El." He felt the warmth of tears lurking behind his eyes. "I told you friends don't lie. Well guess what, they do."

"They make promises they can't keep. They say things to make you feel better when they know they're too weak – too pathetic – to actually _do_ anything." He let the tears fall freely now, sliding warm paths down his cheeks.

"I told you I'd keep you safe, bring you home. I said you'd have a real bed, real food. I said we'd go to the dance…" Mike dropped his head between his knees, trying to hold in the racking sobs that were threatening to escape.

"El, I'm not going to use the radio anymore. I…I know you can't hear me anyway, b-but if, somehow, you've been listening this whole time, I want you to know that just…just because I've stopped talking, it d-doesn't mean that I've ever stopped thinking about you." He clenched the walkie-talkie between his fingers. "I won't stop thinking about you, El. Not ever."

He pushed the antenna back into the supercom, and hauled himself up. Everything could have turned out so differently. Teary-eyed, he pulled apart the den of blankets, throwing each one across the room. He leapt up the stairs two at a time.

This all seemed so pointless. They could get him to stop trying to reach her, to stop keeping her bed intact, or to stop keeping her old yellow t-shirt around, but they couldn't make him forget about her. He pulled open the door to the kitchen.

Smothered by one of the blankets, there was a faint crackle.

" _Mike…"_


	2. Hot Chocolate

**Thanks so much for the kind comments on the introduction! This is actually my first fanfic so it's great to get feedback. Anyway, here is chapter one, and it's a really long one**

 _Chapter 1: Hot Chocolate_

Xx

 _January 10_ _th_

His eyes wandered over the seemingly endless rows of hefty books.

 _Seeing and Knowing, by Fred Dreske._

Each title seemed more abstract than the last.

"Michael."

 _The Mind and its Place in Nature_ , _by C.D. Broad_.

None of the people who wrote this stuff had any idea of what they were talking about. Whatever they thought the mind's 'place in nature' was, Mike was pretty sure none of them thought it involved tossing a van like a Hot Wheels toy.

"Michael!"

"Sorry," he looked back at Dr. Barnett, who was staring at him intently, his slightly bushy, overgrown eyebrows furrowed together in concern. "I just kinda drifted off for a second."

"Do you find yourself…'drifting off' often these days?" Dr. Barnett raised his notepad, and Mike winced at the clicking sound of his pen, which for the last half hour had seemed poised to scratch away furiously regardless of what he said, or how normal he tried to be.

"No!" He began, "I mean, no more than before. It's not that weird to daydream sometimes – besides, I was just looking at your books…" He gestured at the floor-to-ceiling oak shelves that coated three sides of the office, every row over-filled with hardback covering every aspect of psychology, medicine and philosophy.

"I never said it was 'weird', Michael." Dr. Barnett unclicked his pen again. Mike hated the way he kept repeating certain words back at him, like they were particularly interesting for some reason. "Anyway, which books were you looking at – we can talk about them if you'd prefer?"

Mike shrugged, and pointed at a dusty brown leather book entitled _Psychodiagnostic_ , mainly because of the pretentious word in the title, and because it was in his eye line. If Dr. Barnett really wanted to waste his parents' money by talking about these stupid books, then it was fine by him. Better that than another half an hour of constant questioning about his friends, his parents, how well he slept at night…

"Good choice." Dr. Barnett pushed a strand of wiry grey hair behind his ear and gently lifted himself from the old fashioned armchair he'd been sat in. He looked almost exactly like Mike had expected him to – slightly unkempt, like he didn't own a comb and only sometimes remembered to shave, but with a soft, unthreatening face.

"Have you ever heard of Rorschach?" Mike shook his head.

"Well, he was a Swiss psychologist, who died very young. He's famous because he came up with a brilliant game, to help understand how people think-" Dr. Barnett reached the volume and sat back down, opening it towards the back. "It's not regarded too highly anymore, but sometimes it can be an interesting exercise…"

"Here." He lifted a card from the back of the book. It was white, but with black ink splattered across the middle. "What can you see in this picture?"

Mike regretted picking this book already. The picture really didn't look like anything – maybe weird slugs coming out of a cocoon. Or some kind of continent, with a set of small islands above a mainland. "Uh…"

Dr. Barnett lifted his pen again, and once more Mike winced. Click.

Xx

He couldn't see his mom's car out on the street outside. He checked his watch – it was five past one. It had taken an hour, as promised, even though it had felt like at least three times that long. Still, after he got home and wolfed down some lunch he should still have plenty of time to bike to Will's house and meet the gang there for the afternoon. They were meeting to discuss their project for this year's science fair, and without him there the others would probably let Dustin try to build his ridiculous medieval catapult, which Mike was convinced had literally zero chance of winning first prize. Dustin just wanted something to fire watermelons at trees with.

He looked up at the sky, and saw dark clouds gathering. It looked like it might snow any minute. There was already a decent coating on the ground, but it was a little light for this time of year, so they were probably due another dump. He heard a car horn and spun round – parked a few yards down the road there was a brown BMW, complete with Steve Harrington's head poking out and his arm waving at him. Jesus. Mike tucked his hands into his coat pocket and walked over.

"Hey kid!" Steve got out and opened the passenger door for him. Because clearly Mike wasn't capable of doing that by himself. "How are you doing?"

"Fine, thanks." Mike clipped his seatbelt in carefully. He had very little faith in Steve's driving ability.

"Your mom had to go pick up Holly from a playdate, so she asked if I could come get you." Steve, glanced back over his shoulder as he pulled out of the parking space, and the car jolted slightly as he hit the gas. "Was the session…ok?"

This was it, he was in literal hell. Having to talk to his sister's boyfriend, who happened to be the douchebag Steve Harrington, about his visit to a shrink. There was no mercy.

He was about to reply when Steve cut in. "Hey, forget it, let's talk about something else." He seemed to have sensed Mike's reluctance, at least. "Actually, even better…" Steve reached for the radio, "put whatever channel you want on, and crank it up."

Mike cringed a little at how hard he was trying, but at least this was better than talking. Much better. He switched to channel 312, the local rock station, or _The Hawk_ , as it was called. They were playing _This Must be the Place_ from the new Talking Heads album that came out last year. Mike hadn't listened to them much, but Will liked them. Then again Will liked whatever song Jonathan had played him most recently.

"How's football going?" Mike felt like throwing Steve a bone and trying to talk to him.

Steve's eyes lit up. "Great – we won against Whitehall last week, and they beat us badly last year. Next game is against Newark as well, the big rivals. You should come, you can bring your friends along. I can introduce you all to the team if you'd like."

"Thanks. I'll…I'll see what the guys are doing." Mike lied. Steve reached for the volume dial and turned up the radio.

" _Home, is where I want to be_

 _But I guess I'm already there_

 _I come home, she lifted up her wings_

 _I guess that this must be the place…"_

They pulled into the driveway and Mike jumped out, yelling thanks to Steve over his shoulder. If he was quick he could be at Will's by two o'clock, and maybe they wouldn't all already have their heart set on a project design. He had a couple of ideas he wanted to suggest.

He almost ran into Nancy on his way into the kitchen, heading straight to the cupboard to pull out a couple of slices of bread and some peanut butter.

"Jeez someone's in a hurry." Nancy leaned against the counter, smiling at Steve as he walked in behind. "Did you thank Steve for the ride?"

"Nghnn" Mike mumbled through a full mouth.

"Oh – also I was doing some washing downstairs and your walkie-talkie thing was making noise. I think it was Will or something."

"Ok thanks." Mike finished the sandwich, groaning a little, and threw the plate into the sink. He would almost certainly get a stomach ache or heart burn when he tried to ride his bike after eating so quickly. "Wait-" he said suddenly.

Nancy turned round to look at him. "Are you sure it was Will?" He asked. His supercom was never normally strong enough to get all the way to Will's house, and both Dustin and Lucas were there as well. Besides, the last time he used it he was pretty sure he'd left it…on channel seven. "Never mind!" He yelled, darting down the stairs into the basement.

He looked at the blankets, still scattered across the floor from a couple of nights ago. He started lifting them one by one, feeling his heart rate increase with each passing second. Eventually he found the black box, lying on its side by the wall. He pressed the talk button. "Hello?"

He paused for a second. "Eleven?"

Nothing.

He sighed, placing it back on the table and running a hand through his hair.

" _Mike?"_ A faint voice suddenly came through, barely audible over the static. Still, he was instantly certain, he knew it was her.

"El!" He blurted out, "I'm here! Where are you?" He held his breath waiting, hoping for another response.

" _I…don't know"_

"In the upside down?" Mike asked, praying with every fibre of his being that she was anywhere but there.

" _No."_ A sense of relief hit him like an electric shock. He remembered to take a breath, and almost gasped for air.

" _Close"_ She whispered. " _Water – quick water."_ Quick water? What did that mean? He could tell she was crying, and it was agonising.

"A river?" Mike asked. There was silence. Mike wasn't certain Eleven would even know what a river was. "Can you tell me anything else?"

" _Red…things. On the water."_ Shit, he had no idea what she was talking about. He thought he could faintly here the sound of rushing water near her as she spoke.

"El, I need something else – can you see any buildings?"

" _No…Mike, tired…"_ She was struggling to hold the signal, and her voice was growing faint.

"Ok, don't worry El!" He was almost shouting into the receiver, "I'll find you, I'm coming!"

He waited a few minutes for another response, for any more information, but the supercom stayed silent.

Xx

"It's a stupid idea."

"It is not a stupid idea!" Dustin punched Lucas in the arm. "It's like your wrist rocket but a hundred times as good!" He pointed at the sketch of a huge catapult that was in front of them on Will's bedroom floor.

"Yeah but my wrist rocket wouldn't win the science fair, dumbass."

"Maybe we should try to think of something more…modern?" Will suggested.

"Yeah." Lucas agreed. "Medieval technology isn't going to wow any judges, no matter how far you can fire a melon."

"Three. Hundred. Yards." Dustin lifted his hands in exasperation. "You guys don't get it."

"What's not to get? It's a dumb catapult." Lucas was preparing to deflect another punch from Dustin when the door opened.

"Boys?" Joyce stuck her head into the room. "Michael is on the phone – he wants to speak to you right away…" She looked a little concerned for some reason.

Will jumped up and went into the kitchen, the others following behind. "Hi Mike. Yeah…what?" He was looking startled, tapping his foot on the floor as he listened "...seriously? Ok we're coming." He slammed the phone back into place.

"What did he say?" Lucas asked.

"Mom, we're going to Mike's," Will said, ignoring Lucas's question. "I'll be home later ok?" Will was about to turn and head out when Joyce grabbed his arm.

"Wait!" She turned him around to face her. "Why so suddenly, what's going on?"

"Nothing. Mike just had a really good idea for the science fair, but we need to make a start today apparently." Lucas glanced at Dustin. Even though they didn't know what was really going on they could tell Will was lying, but it was pretty good considering he was thinking on his feet.

"Ok, well I want you to ring me before five if you're going to stay for dinner there, okay? I need to know how much meatloaf to defrost." She let go of Will's arm, and he grabbed the other two. "And it's going to snow, so wrap up warm!"

"Sure!" The three of them piled out through the front door and grabbed their bikes from the porch. "I'll explain on the ride, let's go!"

Xx

"So, she doesn't know where she is?" Lucas asked. They were all sat around the table in the basement. "But it's definitely not the upside down?"

"All she said was that there was 'quick water', 'red things' floating in the water, and no buildings." Mike put his head in his hands. "Oh, and she said she was close."

"Oh brother." Dustin slouched back in his chair. "Think guys, where could that be?"

"It sounded like she was near a river – White River is the only one that's close, but even that is like an hour away." Mike kept glancing at the supercom in the middle of the table, hoping it would burst back into life. Outside snow had finally started to fall, and there were only a few hours of daylight left. They sat in silence for a while, each one racking their brains over the meagre set of clues.

"What about the rafting place?" Will said suddenly. They all turned to look at him. "She said it was 'quick' water right, and the red things, they could be kayaks? There's a white water rafting place up near Gosport. Lonnie took Jonathan there once; you know when he kept trying to make him like extreme sports. But it's like halfway to Indianapolis."

"If we leave now how long do you think it would take?" Mike phrased it as a question, but he was already standing up. It didn't matter how long it would take.

"Maybe two hours?" Will shrugged. "Should we tell your parents, they could drive?"

"No, they'll just tell us to call the police, and there's no way the police will believe me when I tell them she spoke to me through the radio." Mike grabbed a rucksack from the corner of the room and started piling blankets into it. "Besides, my parents already think I'm crazy."

"They don't think you're crazy, Mike." Dustin said softly. "They're just worried about you."

"Whatever you say. Still, we need to do this ourselves. If I get close maybe El can find me on the supercom again and we can figure out where exactly she is." The others nodded, and began grabbing their coats. Mike smiled slightly. At least they would always believe him, no questions asked.

"Wait here, I'm gonna get something from upstairs." Mike grabbed a metal thermos flask from a shelf and bounded up the stairs.

The others looked at each other. "You think it was really her?" Lucas asked eventually.

"Yeah, I'm sure it was. Besides, we only saw her disappear, we didn't see her die." Dustin struggled with the zip on his jacket. "And we all know she can work miracles with a radio."

"I guess you're right-" Lucas was mid-sentence when a loud, spluttering cough interrupted him. They both looked at Will, whose eyes bulged, before he ran up the stairs. "Shit." Lucas said.

Eventually Will returned, followed by Mike, who had a bundle of clothes, one of Nancy's coats, a bobble hat, and the full Thermos.

"Will…" Dustin began. "We think you should stay here. Keep on your radio, you know, in case we get lost or something." They both knew they would be out of supercom range almost instantly, and that wasn't the real reason they wanted him to stay behind.

Will looked like he was about to protest, but then he put a hand on his stomach and groaned. "Are you sure? I mean, you really think I'd be more useful that way?"

"Yeah." Dustin smiled, before Lucas added "Definitely. We need someone at base camp. To hold the fort."

Mike looked at the three of them and just shrugged. "Well, either way, we need to get going. Now."

Xx

He kept blinking, trying to shake off the occasional snowflake that settled on his eyelashes. It was falling fast and dense, and Mike couldn't see the back of Lucas's bike even though he knew it was barely ten yards in front of him. Instead, he followed the track marks in the fresh snow, glancing back occasionally to make sure Dustin was somewhere behind him.

"Guys stop!" Mike heard Lucas's voice only a fraction of a second before he saw him, standing directly in front of him in the middle of the road.

"Shit!" He pulled hard on both brakes, his wheels locking but continuing to slide in the snow. He threw the handlebars to the right and veered away from Lucas's bike, but he felt his rear wheel start to slide out. Next thing he knew he was face first on the ground, spread-eagled. He was just thinking about how at least the snow had broken his fall, when he heard another curse from behind him, and felt Dustin come crashing down on top of him.

"Nice place to stop, Lucas." Mike said, looking up from the tangle of bikes and limbs, before wriggling himself free.

"Sorry guys." Lucas offered a hand to help Dustin up. Neither boy was hurt, beyond some bruises they would probably find the next day. "I didn't know which way to go." Lucas gestured at the road in front, which forked in two.

"What does the sign say?" Mike tried to peer through the whiteout but couldn't make out the names.

"I think it says...Bloomington is right, and…Spooner is left?" Lucas shrugged. "I've never heard of Spooner."

"Spencer!" Mike corrected, grabbing his bike from the floor. "It's west of here. If we head to Spencer we should hit White River, then we can head north from there."

In seconds they were back on their bikes, flying down the road as fast as their wheels would allow through the thick snow. It seemed to snake on for miles, carving an endless path through the trees. Mike was pretty sure they were making slow progress, and the light was already beginning to fade, dusk being heightened by the thick clouds.

Eventually, they hit another crossroads. Mike got close and raised a flashlight. "It says Stinesville, or Elletsville." The sign had just two options, and he didn't recognise either this time.

"It doesn't say Spencer anywhere?" Dustin asked, moving closer to look for himself.

"No. Shit." Mike turned and kicked the wheel of his bike.

"We're fucked. I said we should have brought a map!" Lucas threw up his arms and looked accusingly at the other two.

"I didn't have one, and we would have wasted loads of time cycling back to your house…" Mike knew he'd made a mistake, but he thought it would be simple enough to follow the road signs and their compasses.

"Well we're wasting a lot _more_ time now!" Lucas snapped.

"Do you think I don't know that?" Mike was yelling now, his hands balled into fists inside his gloves. "She's out there – in this weather – god knows where, freezing cold, she-"

"Enough!" Dustin gave both Mike and Lucas a shove with each hand. Some snow that had settled in Mike's hair fell to the ground. "Shouting at each other isn't going to help us find her."

"What now. Pick a random road?" Lucas asked, giving Mike a small apologetic smile. Being 'right' wasn't really important right now, and he knew it.

"We could split up? I don't mind going on my own, I-" Mike began, before Dustin cut him off again.

"No. We stay together. Jesus, guys I really think after everything you would have learned that by now."

"Ok fine, which way then?" Mike wiped the snowflakes already settling on his compass and held it up. "They both sound like made-up places."

"The road to Elletsville is north west – that should at least be roughly the direction of the river. But we're already quite far away, and it's getting pretty late – if we go further it's going to be pitch black pretty soon."

"Well we're not giving up." Mike said defiantly, but he was losing hope by the second. Could she survive a night out in this cold, when she was so weak already? Could anyone?

"Guys, listen!" Lucas pointed at the road behind them, and they all turned, staring into a wall of white. They could hear a crunching noise, and eventually headlights came into view. They hadn't seen a car in about two hours.

"Should we try to get a lift?" Mike asked, stepping onto the edge of the road.

Dustin was just asking what they planned to do with their bikes when the car came into view fully. It was Steve's BMW. The car rolled to a halt and the passenger door swung open, before a small leather boot stepped out into the snow.

"Get. In. The. Car." Nancy yelled, giving them a full-on death glare. This time it even looked worse than when he used her dolls for a 'science experiment' when he was nine, and ended up melting them all into one nightmarish blob of faces and plastic hair.

"Wait-" Mike began to protest, when Nancy grabbed him by the ear and pulled him towards the car. He flopped onto the back seat. "But you don't understand, I spoke to-"

"Will told us everything." Steve said, leaning back. "Where do you think she is?"

"The white water rafting place in Gosport. Do you know it?" Mike asked, and Steve nodded. Dustin and Lucas piled into the back of the car. They'd been hiding the bikes behind a bush, and Dustin was now trying to 'take a mental picture' of the spot they'd left them in.

The wheels spun slightly before the car sped onwards, and Mike glanced at Nancy's reflection in the rear view mirror, giving her a small smile.

It was still almost pitch black by the time they reached Gosport. Mike was clutching his supercom, occasionally trying to reach Eleven, with no luck.

"I think the rafting place is up this road somewhere." Steve said, squinting as the windscreen wipers struggled under the weight of the falling snow. "Jesus I hope she hasn't been out here long." They drove past an isolated house, and then the entrance to a large sewage plant, before finally they saw the river.

Mike burst out of the car. "El!" He yelled at the top of his lungs, shouting both into the walkie-talkie and into the darkness around him. "Eleven!" Up ahead he could just make out a small jetty, with red kayaks lined up either side, and he started to run.

He so nearly missed her. She had propped one of the kayaks up on its side against the tree as a shelter, and was lying underneath it. All Mike saw was a glimpse of Nancy's dress, and he practically leapt the remaining few feet that separated them.

"El!" He pulled the makeshift shelter out of the way and knelt down next to her. "Hey, El, I'm here, are you okay?" Her face looked grey, almost blue in the dim light.

"Mike." She smiled weakly at him, opening those big eyes ever so slightly. He felt a tear running down his cheek as he lifted her up, overcome with a nauseating cocktail of joy, fear and relief. Dustin arrived just in time to support her from the other side and help carry her towards the car.

"Turn the heating up Steve – all the way up!" Dustin yelled as reached the side door.

Nancy rushed over and saw Eleven's faded dress – her own dress, the same one the boys had stolen months ago - and touched the tattered fabric. "It's soaking. Mike, did you bring spare clothes?" Mike nodded, grabbing his rucksack. He looked away as Nancy expertly switched El into clean sweatpants, a hoodie and the warm coat he had brought. They all piled into the car, one too many for the five seats so El lay across the back, her head resting on Mike's legs. "We need to get her to a hospital, now!" Mike shouted as Steve turned the car around.

Eleven kept slipping in and out of consciousness as they sped back through the snow, and Mike kept talking. He didn't care that the others could all hear him. Maybe if he kept talking it would help her keep fighting.

"I'm so happy you're here, El." He whispered, stroking his hand across her hair. It was still almost a buzz cut, but it was about an inch longer now. He was horrified at how cold she still felt in his hands. "I'm sorry we weren't faster. We got lost – I should've brought a map, and the snow was so heavy…"

"You have to keep going, try to stay awake, El." She looked up at him, and he could see both the determination and the weakness in her eyes. "Here" he reached for his rucksack and pulled out the thermos. "Watch out, it's warm." He carefully lifted the flask to her lips, and tipped it gently. He spilled a little liquid on the seat, but for once Steve was too preoccupied in getting them to the hospital to notice something happening to his precious car.

"It's called hot chocolate. You mix cocoa powder, which is like, this powder that comes from a bean or something…" Mike realised he didn't know a whole lot about how chocolate was actually made. "Well, anyway, you mix the powder with hot milk, and it makes this awesome drink." He smiled at her. "You normally have it in winter, before bed time. With marshmallows, but I forgot those…" He lifted the flask slowly again, giving her another small mouthful.

Mike sunk back into the seat. He felt like crying, or shouting with joy, or both at the same time. She was actually back, he could feel the weight of her against his legs. She was real. The hot chocolate seemed to be having a slight effect, and he swore he saw the corners of her chapped lips almost turn into a smile before her eyes shut again.


	3. A Rubik's Cube

**Thanks so much for the nice reviews, I can't tell you how much I appreciate it! Sorry this took a while, I was on holiday so it was hard to get much writing done. Hope you enjoy!**

 _A Rubik's Cube_

 **January 12** **th**

 _It hurt._

'It' being _everythin_ g. Sure, not in an agonising, blinding agony, dagger through flesh sort of way, but still, it hurt. She felt a prickling heat that poked under her skin, but she could also feel her teeth chattering.

She lay still for what felt like an eternity. There was an itch on the small of her back that she desperately wanted to reach, but equally she didn't want to move a muscle. Somewhere near her she heard hushed voices for a while, but she only managed to make out bits of what was being said.

" _I'm telling you, it was weird_." It was a young woman's voice, but she sounded worried. " _He just hung up as soon as I said her name – no explanation, nothing, before I could even tell him where we were or what had happened_."

" _What a jackass_." A boy seemed to mutter that. By the way he said 'jackass' El could tell it was like a 'mouth breather' – it wasn't a nice thing to say about someone.

" _No – he's not like that…Hopper was there when all of this happened – he…I don't get it…"_

" _Forget about him_." They talked a little more but too quietly for El to make out what was being said. Eventually, she heard the door close and silence returned.

She tried opening her eyes, but there was just darkness. Some slivers of light crept out from behind the doorway, but she couldn't adjust to the dim light. Where was this place? The last thing she could remember was…actually, she wasn't sure. In the upside down everything sort of blended together.

She felt something digging into her arm. She strained to reach her other hand over and felt…a wire? It seemed to disappear into her skin. Sometimes the men that worked for Papa put wires on her, but usually they were above the skin, not underneath. Suddenly a chilling thought hit her – that's where she was, back in the lab, back with Papa – it was the only explanation.

She pulled at the wire, but something was holding it in place. She gathered her strength and pulled again, but harder. Eventually it seemed to peel away, stinging as it left her skin. What was it? She wanted to get up, to try and get out of this room, but her legs were stiff and unmoving. She tried to fight the feeling of sleep creeping over her again. She had to stay awake, to try and find a way out of this place, but sleep was snaking around her, coiling over her eyes. She felt like she was in someone else's body, powerless to stop her eyes closing.

Some unknown amount of time passed before a sharp pain brought her back awake, and she looked with horror to see a woman in blue putting the wire back into her wrist. It looked like it was filled with some kind of liquid.

"Oh, you're awake!" The woman looked at her – she was middle aged and had short-ish brown hair. She looked a bit like Joyce, almost, but a little more fat, El decided. But she seemed to have a kind face, which was confusing. "I'm sorry this hurts a little honey, but try to leave it in this time ok? It's for your own good."

The woman left briefly, and El turned to look at her wrist. She didn't know whether to leave the strange wire in or not. What if they were poisoning her? Maybe this was why she felt so tired? A sudden memory flashed in her mind of Mike, of looking up at his face, and he was crying. She couldn't place it.

Then the door swung open again, and in came…Nancy, followed by the nurse from before. "Oh you're awake!" Nancy came over and put a hand on her head. "We've been so worried about you."

El looked at her – she still didn't understand what was going, or how she got here.

"Don't worry." Nancy seemed to sense her confusion. "Everything is fine, you're safe now. You're _home_."

Something about hearing Nancy say that word made her heart warm.

Xx

"Mike, seriously, chill out." Lucas looked at his friend, whose knee was nervously bouncing up and down under his desk so violently that it was making a thudding noise. "She'll still be there when school's out."

"Sorry." Mike forced his leg to stop moving, but found his fingers started drumming at the desk instead. He frowned, stuffing his hands into his pockets. "I don't see why Nancy gets to skip school and we have to be here. We were the ones who found her."

"We were pretty screwed without Nancy and Steve." Dustin chipped in, watching Mike check his watch for the twentieth time. "Besides, she's kind of a badass now, remember? If you try to skip school she'll _end_ you."

Before Mike had a chance to respond, Mr. Clarke stood up from his seat. "Ok class, today we're going to be talking about molecular structure." He was straining to speak loudly (well, loud by his mild standards) to try to make himself heard over the chatter. "Open up your textbooks to page forty-three."

"We'll go straight away after school." Lucas whispered to the other three. "Will can finally meet El as well."

Will just smiled at the others. Mike knew was never really one to talk in class, even if it was a teacher as understanding as Mr. Clarke. Dustin and Lucas on the other hand seemed to never stop annoying each other during lessons.

"Structure is everything. Two substances can have the _exact_ same molecular formula - they can contain the exact same number of atoms from the exact same elements – but they can behave completely differently depending on how those atoms are arranged…"

For a while, Mr. Clarke's enthusiasm for the wonders of isomers almost managed to get his mind off whatever was happening at the hospital. He couldn't tell if he really loved science (at least, if he loved it with the same passion that Dustin did), or if he just loved Mr. Clarke's classes. He couldn't picture himself as a scientist when he was grown up, but then he couldn't really picture himself as anything. He didn't really have any hobbies that would translate into a job. He was good at making up stories, but that was about it. Besides, he never did that well in Mrs. Broadwater's English classes. She was fond of telling him his writing 'lacked clarity and focus'.

The bell rang, and they were just heading to the lockers when Mike heard a shout from behind them.

"Hey, Wheeler!" He would recognise that voice anywhere. He turned around slowly to see Troy and James approaching. The taller boy stepped close to him and looked down, his face so close that Mike was hit by the off-milk smell of his breath. "Don't think I've forgotten about you." As Troy left he gave Mike a hard shove, sending him back into the lockers, his head clanging against a metal door.

"You okay?" Will asked once Troy and James were out of earshot.

"…Yeah." Mike rubbed the back of his head and checked his hand – no blood. It was just going to be a bump. "I was just getting used to being left alone by those two." Troy's arm had been in a sling until last week, and he'd blissfully ignored them.

"Man, that is so sweet." Dustin laughed, putting the last of his textbooks away.

"Exactly how is what just happened 'sweet'?" Mike asked incredulously.

"Don't you get it?" He chuckled again. "Their timing is perfect – they start bothering us the _very next day_ after we find Eleven again. I can't wait to see his face when he realises she's back."

Mike grinned at that. "What was it you said?" He nudged Dustin "She's our friend and she's crazy!"

"Damn straight."

Xx

Now she was finally awake and felt a little less tired, she was bored. Nancy was asleep on a chair beside her, and Steve, who had briefly been in the room, seemed to have left. Eleven looked at the tray of food in front of her, a mix of mush in a range of different colors, and gingerly put it back on the side table. She didn't feel like food for some reason, which wasn't at all normal.

The room was basically bare, and all painted plain white, but there was a black box on the far wall. It looked a little similar to the one in Mike's living room, where she had seen the weird images of the red cola can. She focused on the biggest button until the screen burst into life, grey moving lines covering the surface and a buzz emanating into the room. She kept focusing, probing at the airwaves the same way she did with the radio, until eventually she managed to make the pictures settle on a woman, who was stood outside somewhere in the snow, talking excitedly.

" _That's right, much of Gosport lost power last night for upwards of an hour, and as of now we're still waiting for an official explanation…"_ This woman seemed unnecessarily loud, El thought.

" _The heavy snow yesterday must have brought down a power line somewhere – and early indications are that houses like these behind me, which are located close to the river, were worst affected. Back to you."_

Suddenly the pictures shifted back inside, to a colorful room with two smartly dressed middle-aged people behind a desk, and music started to play. It wasn't like the nursery rhymes she occasionally heard in the lab – it was much louder, and she found it unsettling. She strained again until she managed to switch the box off again, and the room returned to blissful silence. She felt a familiar warmth and put her hand towards her face, but she was just too slow to stop a drop of blood from hitting the bedsheets. She frowned.

"Wow." El turned her head to see Nancy was now wide awake, and staring at her in wide-eyed amazement. "You know, you can use this." Nancy held out a strange black rectangle covered in buttons, and she demonstrated it, pointing at the box and pressing a red button to make it come alive, then again to go back to black. "It's called a remote control. It's pretty cool, only newer TVs have them. Ours at home is too old." So the black box was called a tee-vee. She made a mental note to find out why later.

Nancy put the black rectangle on the side table where El could reach it, before looking at the delicate silver watch that hung on her wrist. "You know, Joyce and the boys should be here soon, it's almost four." El touched her own wrist with her other hand. It was bare, and she missed the feel of Mike's chunky watch pressing to her skin, even if she never understood what any of those hundreds of tiny buttons did. _When the numbers read 3, 1, 5, meet us under the power lines._ She smiled at the memory.

It felt like a while before they actually, finally arrived. She heard them even before the door opened, their excited voices carrying up the hallway ahead of them.

"Eleven!" The door swung open and Dustin and Lucas came piling in, embracing her in a carefully-gentle bear hug. "Where were you? Were you in the upside down? How did you get back?" They kept asking more questions before she had a chance to answer, but behind them she watched as Mike entered sheepishly, followed by another boy – Will. Dustin and Lucas let her go, and sat perched on the side of her bed.

Mike walked over, but he hung back a little, standing a few feet from the bed. "How do you feel?" He asked. It felt so strange to see him, to see all of them again. She had forced herself to believe she never would. "Sorry I couldn't stay with you all day, Nancy wouldn't let me." She saw him shoot his sister a glare.

She wanted to say something but she wasn't sure what. She just smiled at him, hoping that somehow the gesture would convey everything she was trying to express. Then suddenly she remembered what he had said to her after the first time she had run away, after she had accidentally hurt Lucas. "Happy…to be home."

He smiled. "I'm happy you're home too." She watched as he scratched the back of his neck. He was being weird. "Oh, I almost forgot, this is Will." He gestured to the small boy next to him.

El looked at him and suddenly she felt something twist in her stomach, something bad. She frowned, then caught herself and forced a smile. This was her friends' friend, which meant he was hers too. At least she thought that was how it worked. "Hi." She said softly.

"Hi. It's good to finally meet you. I've heard so much awesome stuff about you." He looked weak, though not as weak as when she saw him in the upside down. There was a pause for a bit, and El realised everyone probably expected her to say something, but again she wasn't sure what, so she just smiled and nodded once.

"Where were you? In the upside down?" Dustin eventually asked again. El nodded. "For that whole time?" He seemed shocked.

"How did you get back?" Lucas asked. "I thought you couldn't shadow walk?"

"Shadow…walk?" She knew she had heard the term before but she couldn't remember what it meant.

"Like, did you make a new portal? To the upside down?" Had she? She hoped not. She didn't think so – she hadn't seen the demagorgon in there, let alone _touched it_ again – but then she couldn't really remember how she got back.

"Guys, leave it for now, ok?" Mike looked worried. "Stop piling on questions." El couldn't help but let out a small sigh of relief. She wasn't sure she had any answers.

"We brought some stuff for you, Mike has it." Will broke the silence, nodding to Mike. "Trust me, I can remember how boring it is to be stuck in a hospital all day."

Mike finally moved over, sitting in the chair beside the bed that Nancy had vacated. He took off his backpack and pulled out a bundle of papers, holding them out to her. They were very colorful, and had pictures of men and women in strange, bright clothes.

"Those are my Marvel comics." Dustin said excitedly, pointing at the front of the first little book. "That's Wolverine. He has giant claws that shoot out of his hands." She turned through some pages slowly, not really listening while Dustin rambled about the different characters. She barely noticed that she had started to frown slightly.

"It doesn't matter if you can't read the writing, El." Mike said quietly. The others all turned to look at her, and she suddenly felt the tips of her ears become warm, her face flushed with embarrassment. She _could_ read, but only a little. Papa hadn't spent much time on that sort of thing.

"Yeah, the story is in the pictures." Lucas agreed. "Plus, it's just _Marvel_. Like, most of the writing just says 'POW' or 'WHAM'." He seemed to direct this comment more at Dustin than at her.

"Oh, I'm sorry _Mister DC_!" Dustin waved his arms in an 'ooh lah lah' motion. "Because _Batman_ is sooo sophisticated…" El looked at Mike and barely suppressed a giggle. He had that 'someone save me' face on, like he always did when Dustin and Lucas bickered.

"Anyway." Mike seemed to see her laugh and his face quickly snapped back to normal. "Will brought you this." He passed over a plain wooden box, gesturing for her to open it.

She looked inside and saw a set of crayons, some paper and pens. "In case you want to draw something of your own…" Will smiled.

"Thanks." She muttered, avoiding his gaze. His niceness didn't fit with the unsettling feeling she got whenever she looked him in the eyes.

"I brought you this!" Lucas reached over into Mike's bag and pulled out a strange box, covered in little squares of lots of different colors. "It's a Rubik's cube-"

They were interrupted by a cursory knock at the door, before Joyce walked in. She was wearing some kind of blue outfit with a badge on her chest. "Boys, it's time to go, sorry." They all reluctantly got up, saying their goodbyes, except Mike.

"I'm heading back with Nancy in a little while, if that's okay Mrs. Byers?" El felt a surge of relief that he was staying, for a little longer at least, and she wouldn't be left alone here again.

"Of course." She walked up to El before she left. "It's so good to see you again sweetie. We all missed you. I'm coming back later to spend the evening with you, okay?" She patted her on the head, smiling. Something about her made El feel all safe. For some reason she trusted this woman – an adult – maybe as much as she trusted the boys.

After Joyce left, El looked down at the plastic cube. What was it? She heard Mike laugh, and she looked up at him. Was it weird that she didn't know what this was? She felt her face heat up again with embarrassment.

He reached out and touched her hand gently. "Sorry. I'm not laughing at you, El." He seemed to notice his hand and quickly pulled it away again. She still thought he was behaving…differently.

"It's just that, I mean, it's really not obvious what that's for…" He laughed, pointing at the cube. "I wouldn't have had a clue if someone hadn't told me." She smiled a little, and looked up at him, waiting for an explanation.

"It's a game." He said, reaching over and taking it in his hands. "You're supposed to twist it, like this…" She watched as he turned the little squares on the cube, first across, then up and down. "Until each side is completely one color. It's pretty hard – it took me ages to do it."

"Why?" It seemed like an entirely pointless exercise.

"Good question. I…dunno." He laughed again, and she joined in, enjoying that he made her feel like she was actually in on a joke, for once. "I guess it's meant to be fun. Also, it's difficult so it's a way of kind of…testing yourself. To see if you're smart enough to figure it out."

She nodded slowly. Tests were something she definitely understood.

"Anyway, you have a TV in here, so you don't need to worry about this stuff." He picked up the remote and pointed it at the box, bringing the pictures back up. "Have you watched anything yet?"

"No." She said softly. "Too loud."

"Oh." He looked concerned. "Here, you can do this." He held down a different button and the box got much quieter. "Is that better?" She nodded.

"Somewhere in here there should be…" He was looking around under the bed and on the side table. "Here!" He held up a small booklet triumphantly. "This has the TV guide in it." He flicked through the booklet towards the back, and picked up a pen from the side table, and began scribbling on the page.

"Hmm…no…no…no…" El just watched, enjoying the way his lips scrunched together and his eyebrows lowered when he was concentrating.

He seemed to be finished, and his hand went to unstrap his watch. She felt a buzz of happiness, holding out her arm as he wrapped the plastic watch around and fastened it. Somehow her wrist just felt better with it there. "I'm writing this down for you, ok?" He took a piece of blank paper from the wooden box will had given her and started scribbling again.

"When the watch looks like six, zero, zero." He pointed to the first set of numbers, which looked like 6:00. "Press this button." He pointed to the number 3 on the remote, writing it down next to the time. "It's called Whiz Kids, it's kind of childish but it's fun. These kids are really good with computers and they solve crimes."

"Crimes?" El asked, not really understanding the concept.

"Like, anything, robberies, or muggings." She frowned, and Mike seemed to understand why she was still confused. "Crimes are things bad people do. But this is all made up. It's just supposed to be fun."

She nodded, but she wasn't exactly sure she understood.

"If it gets too scary, just turn it off, okay?" He smiled at her. "Besides, this might be better…at eight there's an animal documentary, on channel one." He pointed at the first button on the remote control. "It's just lots of videos of different animals and where they live. You'll like it."

She smiled. She liked animals a lot. "Lions?" She remembered her stuffed toy from back in the lab.

Mike's eyes seemed to light up at her enthusiasm. "Yeah, lions! And loads of other cool animals too." She looked at the piece of paper again. _Eight-zero-zero, button one._

Mike looked over at the watch on her wrist. "I'm so sorry but I have to go. Nancy and I have to be at home tonight. But Mrs. Byers is coming back to make sure you aren't alone…" She could see he seemed distressed at leaving her on her own, even for a while.

"It's okay." She said, forcing a smile.

"I brought you one more thing." He reached into his bag, pulling out a long black box. She would recognise it anywhere – it was his walkie-talkie. "I bought a new one, so we could talk. School is probably out of range, but my house should just be in reach. Besides, if it's important maybe you can…you know…boost the signal."

She smiled, nodding.

"If you want to talk to the guys, go to channel six." He pointed at a dial on the front that was pointing at the number six. "For tonight, if you want to talk to me on my own, I'll be on channel seven." He turned the dial up to seven, then back again. "If you get, you know, scared in the night, then just talk to me. I'll wake up."

He stood up to leave, throwing his backpack over his shoulder. "I promise I'll come see you again tomorrow." _Promise._ She still felt reassured by that word.

As the door shut behind him she looked down at the assortment of presents on her bed. Her hand went straight for the Rubik's Cube. A test. She must have it finished by the time Mike comes back tomorrow.

Xx

Outside the weather had warmed up slightly, and sleet was falling inelegantly in the hospital car park, sloshing onto the snow covered ground which was beginning a transformation into watery slush.

It'll freeze overnight, Hopper thought, grumbling. There will be an inevitable minor car crash to deal with tomorrow when someone back-ends another car after tailing too closely before a traffic light.

He lowered his hat to cover his face as Steve's car drove past on its way out, with Nancy in the passenger seat and the kid in the back. Once they were out of sight he reached for the glove compartment and pulled out a flask of coffee. It was going to be a long night.


	4. Scary Monsters (and Karma Chameleons)

_Scary Monsters (and Karma Chameleons)_

 _ **January 13**_ _ **th**_

Dawn was just beginning to breach the tree-tops as Hopper's Chevy Blazer rumbled back towards Hawkins, tyres pushing on through the sludge. Home first, for a quick nap, and then he'd go to the station. He _hated_ mornings. If there was one thing he hated more than an early morning, it was an early morning when he hadn't slept the night before.

His paranoia had been for nothing anyway – the hospital had remained blissfully quiet all night. The more he thought about it the more he realised he'd overreacted. Sure, Nancy probably shouldn't have called him, and definitely shouldn't have said _the girl's_ name over the phone, but still, he knew he was exaggerating the lab's power. After all the manpower and money they'd lost he was convinced it was barely a shell of its former self. That was probably why they were so keen on harassing him since she'd disappeared – they were out of other options.

His mind moved on to more pressing matters, like where the girl would stay now she was back. Obviously she couldn't stay with him, and the Byers' house was too risky, as was the Wheeler kid's. Maybe they could get her onto the witness protection programme, and get her moved to another state, with a new name? He'd have to give that plan a hard sell to get it past Joyce. Plus, he wasn't too hot on trusting any government organisation at the moment. You know times are strange, he thought, when a 'pig' (the chief of police, no less) doesn't trust Uncle Sam.

His car pulled to a halt in the familiar clearing in front of the lake, and he killed the engine. It was almost seven o'clock, so if he wanted to get a decent nap in and still be in work by midday he had to get a move on. Flo would definitely be on his case today.

It was only after he'd unlocked his front door and let himself in that it occurred to Hopper that he didn't remember locking the heavy bolt when he left last night. He spun around on his heels, but suddenly he felt the air rush out of his lungs as something hard – something metal – crashed into his stomach. He steadied himself, trying to reach out to find something to grab hold of to keep his balance, but then he felt a second blow. He wasn't sure, but he thought he heard the sound of one of his ribs cracking. He staggered back into the room, feeling the strength evaporate from his legs as they buckled beneath him. On his knees he strained to glimpse his attacker, but his sight was spotted, colours leaking into his peripheral vision where they didn't belong. The last thing he saw was the outline of a gloved hand, and the glinting tip of a hypodermic needle.

Xx

" _Eight_ boxes of Eggos?" Joyce eyed the shopping cart suspiciously, which was bare except for the breakfast waffles.

"Two packs of blueberry, two chocolate, two cinnamon, and two original." Mike stated simply. "She really likes Eggos."

"Okay…" Joyce shrugged. "But we're getting some fruit and vegetables for her as well, no arguments." Mike just nodded. They were stopping off on the way back from the hospital after El's discharge, and Will was waiting with her in the car. He'd been dry coughing all day, and Joyce had already picked up a range of cough syrups and tablets for him. As for Eleven, as a temporary solution Joyce had decided to take the girl in while she rested – she was still going to be mostly bed-ridden for a couple more days, but at least she would be out of the hospital.

"So…how exactly did you find her?" Joyce asked, trying to choose between two equally bruised bags of tomatoes.

Mike shrugged. "I don't really know." He answered truthfully. "She spoke to me through the radio, then Will figured out where she was. I don't think even she knows how she got back."

Mike saw some concern in the look Joyce gave him. "Well, you were all very stupid riding your bikes into that snow storm and not telling anyone." She said gravely. "Very brave, but very stupid."

They eventually paid up and headed back to the car. Mike noticed that Eleven and Will appeared to be sat in relative silence, which made him smile. Neither of them were exactly great talkers. Seeing Eleven back in a hospital gown, even with his winter coat over the top, was disconcerting.

He sat down next to her in the back, and they had barely been driving for five minutes before he felt her head resting against his shoulder. He felt his breathing get shallower as he tried not to disturb her. Something about her closeness, her lack of boundaries suddenly bothered him. His hands were clammy, and he looked down at her and felt almost nauseous. Couldn't she just give him some space? Now she was back he felt differently when he was around her, and not in a good way.

Thankfully, Joyce switched on the radio and El perked up.

" _Next on The Hawk, still climbing the charts and now pushing into the top ten is the new song from Culture Club…"_ Jesus. This came out a few weeks ago and he'd heard it around ten times already. Mike really wasn't a fan.

" _Karma karma karma karma karma Chameleon…_

 _You come and go_

 _You come and goooo…"_

He shuddered. This song was the worst. He leaned forward into the front and changed the station, which made Joyce chuckle. They turned off the main highway and onto the road back into Hawkins.

Suddenly though the radio cut to static hiss, before switching magically back to _The Hawk_.

" _Loving would be easy if your colors were like my dreams_

 _Red gold and green_

 _Red gold and greeeeeen…"_

He looked over and El was smiling, the tiniest droplet of blood forming under her nose. Great.

" _Karma karma karma karma karma Chameleon…"_

When the song finally, blissfully ended, El went to lean her head on his shoulder again, but Mike shifted around to face the window. He heard her slump back into her seat again, and he felt a momentary pang of guilt.

As they drove he began to recognise more and more of the street signs they passed, and soon enough he was being dropped off at his house, turning to watch Joyce's car disappear down the tree-lined road.

Xx

"Here you go sweetie, you can choose what you like from these." Joyce handed El a bundle of clothes that she'd dug out from a box in the cupboard under the stairs. "It's all my old stuff from when I was a teenager. They'll be a bit big but it's better than that horrible hospital gown."

El smiled, taking the clothes into the bathroom. Privacy. She would never forget how terrified Dustin had looked when she had been about to get undressed in the basement that night. She still didn't fully understand why, but then there was so much she didn't understand. This was their world, she would just have to try to fit in.

She looked at the choices: a couple of t-shirts, one green and one white with a logo on it; a skirt made out of this heavy, almost rough, blue material that she didn't recognise; a pair of black shorts; and a pale yellow dress with violet flowers on it. "Pretty." She said definitively, running her hands over the hem of the dress.

She slipped it on and turned to look at herself in the mirror. The dress was nice, but her eyes drifted – as always – back to her hair. She ran her hand over it. It was slightly softer now, and she could almost pinch a little between her fingers, but it was still _so_ short. She heard Lucas' voice in her ear, saying just one word.

 _Freak_.

She shook her head, trying to expel the thought, and straightened the top of her dress, before walking back out into the living room. Jonathan was standing over the stove, stirring something. It smelt unbelievable, this tapestry of warm, rich flavours she had never encountered before.

"Don't you look lovely!" Joyce smiled at her, bringing her over to the sofa and getting her to lie down. "You need to try and relax for the next couple of days ok? Keep as much of your strength as possible." She nodded, while Joyce unfolded a blanket and draped it over her.

Will was sat at the kitchen table, drawing something in crayon. "Jonathan's cooking – so it's going to be something really good!" He said enthusiastically.

"Hey!" Joyce feigned offence, "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing mom…" Will laughed, going back to his picture.

She closed her eyes, not sleeping but just enjoying the hubbub of gentle noise in the kitchen. The sound of Jonathan chopping vegetables, or Joyce muttering to herself as she went about doing chores, or the scratching of Will's crayons against the page. This was her perfect silence - she didn't ever want it to be fully quiet. In fact, if she could she would have the world be constantly full of these soft, happy sounds, letting her know even with her eyes closed that there were friends around. It was always in silence when she had her _bad_ dreams, the ones she woke from crying, soaked in cold sweat.

"Will?" She asked eventually, while Joyce and Jonathan were distracted in conversation about which herbs to include in the dish.

"What's up?" He walked over, perching on the edge of the sofa. The unsettling feeling she had near him returned, but she just gritted her teeth and tried to forget about it.

"I…" She pointed to herself, trying to think of the right words. "Upset…Mike?" She hadn't been able to stop thinking about it since the car journey home. He'd seemed angry at her, and she needed to figure out what she'd done so she could fix it.

"No!" Will said quickly. "I don't think so, anyway. He just really hates Karma Chameleon…"

"Kar-ma-ker-me-le-yon? She repeated slowly.

"Yeah. The song from the car, he thinks it's annoying, and Nancy plays it all the time at home apparently." El furrowed her brow. She had liked the song. She certainly hadn't meant to upset him by putting it back on.

"It's okay, El." Will said sincerely. "Everyone has different taste in music. You don't have to like the exact same stuff." He nodded over to the kitchen. "Jonathan showed me all the bands I really like."

"What?" Jonathan looked over his shoulder, hearing his name mentioned.

"I'm explaining to Eleven how everyone has different taste in music."

"Oh. That's true." Jonathan went back to cooking. "Most people's taste sucks though…" He added as an afterthought.

El didn't like this revelation, that you could like the _wrong_ music. "What does Mike…taste?" She asked Will, who suppressed a laugh.

"Err…you don't really say it like that." He said gently. "It's more like, 'what is Mike's taste in music', if that makes sense."

It didn't.

"Anyway, Mike likes a lot of stuff. He _loves_ David Bowie though." Will stood up. "I can play you some, if you'd like?" She nodded and slowly eased herself up from the sofa, following him down the corridor to a bedroom. El had only heard a handful of songs ever, and she never wanted to hear any of the lullabies Papa used to sing her ever again.

Will started looking through the shelves. "Here we go." He held up a white square, which had a picture of a strange looking man with red hair on the front, and he slid out a small black disk. El noticed how carefully he was handling everything, like it was very delicate. "I'll skip to Mike's favorite song."

He fiddled with this big, strange machine in the corner of the room, placing the disk gently on a spinning plate and then lifting a lever. He placed the lever back down and there was a crackling sound. El just watched in bemusement.

"The album is called _Scary Monsters_." Will sat down next to her on the bed, facing the machine. "This song is _Ashes to Ashes_."

The song opened with these strange, high-pitched notes, and then this odd voice began singing. It was…different. El sat in silence, her hands folded in her lap, as the song gently played. She was focusing on every line, trying to take in whatever special thing made this particular song Mike's favorite.

The song was about half-way through when Will got up suddenly and muttered something, before rushing out of the room. El just sat, perched on the edge of the bed, mesmerised by this strange machine, and the even stranger song coming out of it. She couldn't tell if she liked it or not…it was sort of eerie. One lyric made her smile though.

" _I'm stuck with a valuable friend. I'm happy...I hope you're happy too."_

As the song came to an end, she noticed Will still hadn't returned. Gingerly, she made her way back down the corridor. Her legs still felt heavy and stiff, and she wanted to lie down under the blanket again and listen to Jonathan hum while he cooked.

She was walking past the bathroom and heard Will inside, coughing again. "Will?" She said softly against the door.

"One second!" He yelled back. "I'm c-c-coming" his voice was spluttery, and it sounded like he was in pain. Was something wrong? She didn't want to interrupt his privacy – the bathroom seemed to be the place for privacy, she had quickly learned. The horrible groaning and coughing didn't stop though, so she took a deep breath and pushed the door, finding it unlocked.

Will was hunched over the toilet bowl, his body convulsing as he wretched. Just as she first saw him she thought she saw a glimpse of something dark slide out of his mouth and into the bowl, but he quickly flushed the toilet and shut the lid.

"I'm okay." He said, turning to face her and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He forced a weak smile. "I'm fine." El wasn't convinced.

"Will! Eleven!" Jonathan shouted from the other room. "Dinner's ready!"

El went to walk out of the bathroom, but Will quickly ran in front of the door. "Don't say anything about this." He said seriously, looking her directly in the eyes. "Please."

She nodded sincerely. It hadn't occurred to her to say anything anyway. She had assumed that if there was something wrong Will would have told his mother already anyway.

They sat down for dinner, El watching intently as Jonathan took her plate, and using a large, almost flat spoon lifted a piece of this gooey, red and white food onto the plate.

"Will, honey, turn off the TV would you?" Joyce gestured to the box in the corner, which El only now noticed was on, and was emitting a low chatter into the room. "You know I don't like the TV on while we eat…"

" _I'm here at the sewage plant on White River in Gosport, where state police arrived late last night to shut down the facility, citing concerns over-"_

Will hit the off button before returning to sit next to Eleven at the table. "It's lasagne." He said, noticing El was eyeing her food suspiciously. "It's good, trust me."

She took a mouthful, not realising quite how hot it was until it started to burn the top of her throat. She looked at Joyce, wide-eyed and panicked.

"Here, take some water, honey." Joyce said laughing, holding out a glass of water. El greedily gulped down half the glass, savouring the blessed relief for the fire that raged in her mouth. After waiting a while though, she tried a couple more mouthfuls, and it was heaven. After this she didn't think the stuff she used to eat at the lab could even be put in the same category as this as 'food'. It was usually just some kind of brown, tasteless slush with a hunk of rough, often slightly stale bread.

"So what do you have on at school tomorrow?" Joyce and Will began discussing Will's lessons, and which classes he was looking forward to and which he was dreading. El decided that Mr. Beech, his math teacher, sounded just awful.

As she watched them speak, continuing to fork the gooey goodness into her mouth, she noticed that she was sat next to Will, but she wasn't feeling the usual sense of dread and sickness that she did when she was this close to him. It had been so strong just a few minutes ago as they'd sat on the bed together listening to Mike's song. She'd had to really focus to tune it out and listen to the music.

Now she felt almost nothing.

XxX

 _A/N: Thanks for reading! This chapter was difficult to write for some reason. Sorry if it was a little music-heavy, there are a few reasons I really wanted to write some of that stuff in…_

 _Also, not exactly Mike teaching El something in this chapter. More him teaching her indirectly, I guess!_

 _Anyway, as always I really cherish hearing what you guys think, so let me know_


	5. Odysseus

**Odysseus**

 _ **January 16**_ _ **th**_

El lay on her front on the living room floor, propping her head up with her elbows and kicking her feet aimlessly in the air behind her.

"Sorry you've been on your own a bit today." Joyce said, seeming to notice how bored she looked. It was a Thursday, so the boys were at school and Joyce was only popping home briefly in her lunch break. "Nancy will be here soon." She gestured at the round clock on the wall, "when the long hand thingy points straight up."

Effortlessly, El focused on the minute hand, turning it to point at twelve. Joyce looked back and frowned. "Oh honey, you know it doesn't work like that…" She plucked it from the wall and began fiddling with the back, the hands slowly spinning back to their old position.

El just huffed, rolling over onto her back. She looked at Mike's watch: _12:25._ This day was going so slowly, and the fact that she knew she was going to get to spend the afternoon with Nancy made the waiting even worse.

"Here, this is for you." Joyce put a plate with a sandwich on the table. "Try to eat all of it, you still need your strength." It had been three days since she left the hospital, and she was feeling pretty good again, almost like normal.

"I'll see you in a few hours El, okay? Have fun with Nancy later." Joyce leaned down and kissed the top of her head before rushing back out, the house returning to silence with the click of the front door. El hopped up and went over to the table, picking up the sandwich carefully - every meal was still mostly a new experience. She took a cautious bite, and was rewarded with a sweet sensation. The sticky red stuff in today's sandwich was good, she decided. Much better than the 'tuna' (as Joyce had called it) yesterday.

She munched slowly, smiling as Buster trotted in from another room, snuffling at her feet while she ate. She liked him a lot, even though he was dopey and kept slobbering on her. She rewarded his company by breaking off a bit of her sandwich and passing it under the table, laughing as she felt his warm tongue tickle her hand.

When the doorbell finally rang, El almost leapt out of her seat. As she slipped on her shoes (the ones Joyce had given her, though they were significantly too big) she felt a little nervous – she really, really wanted Nancy to like her.

Nancy, as it turned out, was accompanied by a sulky-looking Steve. "I can't drive." She explained. "Well, mom won't get me a car…"

El sat in the middle seat in the back as they travelled, watching the houses pass by and listening to Nancy gush about the shopping mall in Bloomington. They had much better outlets than anything in Hawkins, and there was a little boutique shop called Rusties, which sold _the cutest_ skirts…

"We'll meet you here at five thirty." Nancy kissed Steve on the cheek as she slipped out of the car, and once he'd driven off she held out her hand for El to take. "We have so much to do, two hours is not nearly enough time!"

What followed was a giddy whirlwind. Even though she'd never been shopping before, El could tell Nancy was good at this, guiding her around the huge building with military precision. The changing rooms were strange at first, but El quickly got used to it, trying to bundle as much as she could under her arms before slipping behind the curtain to try it all on. _You can't try on everything in the shop,_ Nancy had laughed. But there was so much choice, in all different colors and styles – how else would she know what she liked?

After a few unanimously agreed purchases – a red dress with shoulder straps, a long blue skirt, and a button-up white shirt (it can go with almost anything, Nancy had said) – they had reached something of an impasse.

"It's practical, you should get one pair of jeans at least." Nancy was holding up a pair of dark grey trousers, which had strange rips around the knees. "But then, if we get these we might not have enough for the other dress you liked…"

"I definitely think you still need a coat, so that's non-negotiable." Nancy turned to El, who just looked down, scuffing her oversized shoes against the wooden floor of the shop. She had _really_ liked that dress. It was a pale shade of pink and had a light collar at the top – almost like Nancy's old one that she'd warn for so long.

After a pause, Nancy put the jeans back on the rack, seeming to sense El's disappointment. "Fine, let's get the dress. You did look very pretty in it." Those words made her face get all tingly, and caused the tips of her ears to heat up. "Just don't blame me when you wish you had some comfy trousers to relax in!"

They picked up the dress, along with a brown coat that had fake fur lining on the inside and fur trim around the hood. It was amazingly warm, just trying it on in the shop was like crawling back into bed. They still had twenty minutes until Steve was due back, so they sat in the food court, Nancy ordering her a hot chocolate and getting herself some kind of caramel thing that El didn't quite hear the name of.

"Have you had a nice time?" Nancy asked, stirring a plastic spoon idly in her drink.

"Yes." El looked at the shopping bags either side of her chair and smiled. "Thank you." It would be strange having stuff that was really hers, not stolen or borrowed.

"No problem, this is what big sisters are for!" Nancy grinned. "Do you feel fabulous?" She asked, feigning a pout.

El laughed. She liked her clothes, but she certainly didn't feel pretty. Subconsciously, her hand went up to touch her head.

"Don't worry about it." Nancy said earnestly, reaching her hand over to clasp El's on the table. "It'll grow out faster than you think."

They sat in relative silence for a while. At first El had enjoyed the bustle of people, watching them as they went noisily between stores. Now though it was becoming a little overwhelming, and she was ready to head home.

"Mike…is angry with me." She declared suddenly, which seemed to take Nancy by surprise. El was hoping maybe Nancy would be able to help her make things better – she was his sister after all.

"Is he?" Nancy raised her eyebrows. "I mean…if he's just being sulky I wouldn't read too much into it."

El looked at her questioningly.

"It's…difficult. Whatever happened I'm sure you didn't do anything wrong." She sighed, and El thought she could see her scrambling for the right words, before giving up. "He's depressed." Nancy said simply, draining the last of her milky drink. "At least, I think he is, and so does Mom. Ever since what happened."

"De-pressed?" El hadn't heard the term before.

"Oh…it's like being sick, sort of." She paused for a moment. "…often when he's around his friends, and he's playing, he's just pretending to be happy. Actually he's sad." Nancy lowered her gaze.

"His bedroom is next to mine, so I hear him a lot, at night…" She looked up at El with a serious expression. "You can't tell him I said any of this, okay?"

El frowned, nodding. "He will get better?" She asked. When she was sick, Papa had given her medicine – it had tasted horrible - strange and bitter – but she had felt better afterwards.

"Oh I'm sure he will." Nancy nodded earnestly, but her eyes still betrayed a sense of worry. "It just takes time. It was a hard year, for everyone."

El caught the meaning behind her words. "Barb?" She asked, feeling a wave of guilt at having brought up this conversation. An image of the red-haired girl flashed up in El's mind, grotesque and coated in slime, the slug slithering out of her open mouth.

"Yeah." Nancy stared intently at an empty sugar packet on the table. "Anyway!" She seemed to catch herself, suddenly remembering who she was talking to. "Here I am complaining to you, of all people! Let's change the subject."

El nodded, smiling weakly. It was a lot to take in.

 _When Mike looks happy, he is sad._

She wasn't sure she fully understood what that meant.

Xx

Florence stared at the two letters in front of her, holding them up to her desk lamp one by one and peering in so close that her nose brushed the page.

"It's been three days." She said eventually, to no one in particular.

"What's that Flo?" Callaghan was sat in his usual spot out in the main room, finishing off the last of the days paperwork.

"I'm worried about the chief." She left her small reception desk and went over to his and Powell's table.

"Come on, Flo, we've been through this." Callaghan nudged Powell for some kind of support. "He left a note."

"That's the thing." She shook her head. "When has he ever left us a note before? A hungover voicemail is much more his style…"

Callaghan sighed, and Powell just shrugged. Flo found the pair of them exasperating.

"Look at the writing." She spread the two letters on the desk in front of them. "This is a report he filed last month, and _this_ is the note."

The two paused and read for a while. "It just says he has some family issues and he's going to stay with his sister. We already know all this."

"Not what it says!" Flo lifted the note closer to them. "The writing!"

"It looks like the chief's writing to me." Callaghan said, finishing the last of his paperwork and shutting the filing cabinet. There had been an arrest (for a drink-driving charge) and a noise complaint, so it was a comparatively busy day. She could tell she was annoying them by taking up their time just as their shifts ended.

"The 'F's are different." She pointed out, but the pair of them had already stopped listening.

"Why don't you leave the detective work to us Flo?" Callaghan laughed. "We'll see you tomorrow." He patted her on the back, grabbing his coat.

"Yeah, stop stressing out over this, he's with his sister." Powell added. Flo sank back into her chair and watched them leave.

" _The 'F's are different…"_

 _ **January 17**_ _ **th**_

Mike could hear something, a faint noise from under his bed. He looked over at his alarm clock, it was two in the morning. What the hell could Lucas want? He reached under, feeling around in the dark for the supercom.

" _Mike_ ". He heard it again – it wasn't Lucas, it was El – his hand landed on the black box and he pulled it out, lifting the antenna.

"El? Is that you? Over." He waited for a response.

"Yes." Did she sound upset? He thought he could hear a quiver in her voice, and she'd sniffed, like she was fighting back tears. "The monster…I saw it…"

"Hey, it's okay, El." He realised what had happened. "It was just a bad dream. The monster is gone, remember? You're in Will's house, Joyce is next door. You're safe." He paused. "Do you want me to come round? Over."

"No" she said quickly. "I'm sorry…"

"You don't have to be sorry, El." He rolled over in bed, pulling the blankets up. "How was your day? I heard you went out with Nancy? Over."

"Fun." El replied, and he could almost picture her smiling a little. "Nancy taught me how to shop." There was a pause, before she added "Over", making him smile.

"Oh wow." Mike suppressed a laugh. "That might not be a good thing." Mike racked his brains for something he could talk about that would get her mind off everything. "My mom says she's going to help home-school you, so you can come to school with us eventually. Over."

"School…is fun?" El asked. "Over."

"Not really. It's okay sometimes," he said honestly. "Like today in history class we learned about the Odyssey. It's this epic story, written over two thousand years ago in ancient Greece, about Odysseus, who was the King of a place called Ithica."

Mike paused, trying to piece the story together in his mind, and phrase it in a way that El would be able to follow. "Odysseus was sent far away from home, to fight in a war. He had to leave behind his wife Penelope, who he loved very much."

"Odysseus won the war, but then he had to travel home across an ocean again. He stopped on an island on the way, which was the home of a beautiful woman called Calypso, who fell in love with Odysseus." Mike felt his eyelids sinking, and stifled a yawn. "Calypso was pretty, but she was also cruel and devious, and Odysseus was loyal to his wife Penelope. So, when Calypso realised she couldn't marry Odysseus, she kept him prisoner on her island for seven whole years…" Mike wasn't sure if he was getting all the details right, but he carried on anyway. "She had a magic flute, which she could play to make people do whatever she wanted…"

"Anyway…after seven years he managed to escape, and he built a raft and set sail again for Ithica. This time, though, there's a storm at sea, and Odysseus's raft is wrecked by the waves…" Mike carried on, telling her about Odysseus' adventures as far as him defeating the terrifying cyclops, before he was confident she was asleep.

"El?" He whispered her name, and got no response. He carefully pushed the antenna back down, placing the supercom on his bedside table. He smiled, rolling over in bed. He would struggle to get back to sleep – but then he didn't really sleep all that well these days anyway. He was happy for some reason that she'd wanted to talk to him about this, not anyone else. He wasn't sure why that mattered, but to him it did.


	6. The Big Dipper

**The Big Dipper**

 **January 17** **th**

"Wake up."

Hopper didn't need to look up to know who was standing in the doorway. "Today is the day, Jim."

He looked up at his captor, only to see that Brenner was already walking out the door. In his place, two uniformed lackeys came storming in, grabbing Hopper by the arms and hauling him up from the bed.

"What's going on?" He yelled, jerking his arm and managing to wrestle his left hand free. He went to strike one of his attackers, aiming for the temple to knock him out cold, but before he could land the punch he felt an agonising jolt of electricity stab into his side. His body spasmed, collapsing gracelessly back onto the bed in a flurry of involuntary movement.

"Don't make it difficult chief." One of the nameless, identity-less guards said, lifting a pair of handcuffs from his belt. Even the way he said the word 'chief' was loaded with ironic contempt. Hopper was quick to put his arms behind his back. It was no use resisting, and he knew from experience that handcuffs could be made as comfortable – or uncomfortable – as the person applying them wanted them to be. He felt the cold metal clamp around his wrist too tight anyway, squeezing and pinching at his skin.

They led him from his room deep in the basement of the lab and up a flight of stairs. As he took his first proper look around he realised that his prison for the last three days had been on the same corridor as the room where he'd found the child's drawing weeks ago. They hauled him all the way up to the front door, but before stepping outside he was suddenly grabbed again, and a bag was pulled down over his head. He was submerged in darkness, and as he was caught off guard his open mouth was now filled with the unwelcome taste of musty cloth.

"Where are you taking me?" He yelled, his voice weak and muffled. "Brenner?!"

There was no reply. He felt a chill from the outside air, but it was only brief, before he was thrust into a car. He tried to keep track of how long the journey was in his mind – it could prove to be useful information later on – but it was difficult. Minutes seemed to morph and stretch into hours.

Eventually, the car pulled to a stop. "Come on Jim." He heard the door open and a hand pulled him from the car, guiding him forwards. Again he was only outside briefly, but it was long enough to tell that wherever they had taken him the air was rancid, a sharp smell penetrating his cloth mask.

He was led back indoors and down a long corridor, coming to a halt finally in what sounded to him like a large, echoing room. The air felt thick, and unpleasant, like he was breathing in cold cigar smoke. He made a mental note: two lefts, then a right. That was his way back outside. Then, finally, he heard Brenner's unmistakable voice again.

"It's time, chief." The bag was lifted from his head. He looked around – he was in some sort of decrepit factory. The ceiling was high – at least twenty feet, and the walls were made entirely of plain grey concrete. There was a large machine he couldn't identify in the centre of the room, and metal piping criss-crossed the high ceiling.

Then, looking straight ahead for the first time, he suddenly realised why he was there, and why the atmosphere seemed so thick and unpleasant. Creeping across the far wall was a mesh of greenish, gelatinous strands, spanning out like a sinister spider web. It looked like it was made from some substance that didn't come from this planet, some strange, living, pulsing material. At the very center was a deep, black void. He was looking at another gateway.

It was smaller than the one in the lab had been, the gap looked barely big enough to fit a person, but it was a gate all the same. In front of him, one of the many non-descript men in uniform stepped forward, holding out a yellow hazmat suit.

"You'll regret this. Trust me, you'll regret this." Hopper managed to spit out. It was all happening alarmingly quickly. He stared at Brenner and the silver haired man stared straight back, but as always his eyes remained clinical and cold, devoid of even a glimmer of doubt or emotion.

"You haven't left us with a choice, Jim." Brenner walked behind him, unclipping the handcuffs and handing Hopper the suit. He thought about making a break for it now his hands were free, but a cursory glance told him there were at least four semi-automatic guns trained on him, and two more armed men were stood by the only exit he could see. "You refused to talk. You promised us the girl. Now it's time for you to go and get her."

 _They think she's still in the upside down._

He felt a sense of relief wash over his body. They were more short staffed and less capable than he thought – she had probably been staying with Joyce Byers for the last three days and they still hadn't managed to put two and two together. After everything he'd done, and after all the guilt he'd carried with him about that girl, it was at least some relief. Recently he had been seeing Eleven in his nightmares almost as often as he saw Sarah. He tried to push these thoughts to the back of his mind – the girl was the least of his worries right now – and focus on finding some way out of this real, waking nightmare.

"Let's go." The man holding the hazmat suit hovered his hand threateningly over his taser, Hopper's now too-familiar electric tormentor. Slowly, he slipped on the yellow suit, arms first, the familiar rubbery texture bringing back unpleasant memories of what he knew was to come.

"Don't return unless you have her." Brenner said, watching him with his arms folded. "Do you understand?"

Hopper took a step towards the gate. He didn't have a plan – there was no obvious way out of this. His breathing felt jagged and heavy, and it was starting to cloud up the plastic visor on the suit. He stared ahead, watching the slimy tendons that covered the gate flap gently, pulsing as if they were somehow alive. He reached out a hand and pushed them away.

"Fuck you." He said simply, stepping forwards into the darkness.

Xx

"Let's park up here and walk." Karen said, setting the handbrake. The road into school was congested with cars already, so they were stopping a block further back. "Are you excited for the sleepover tonight?"

El nodded vigorously. They had driven to school to pick the boys up since Will was still banned from cycling out in the cold. His cough had actually gotten much better, but Joyce was feeling understandably protective.

"Obviously we wouldn't normally allow a girl to stay the night, but we decided we had to make an exception just this once." She smiled, but El was left confused. Why would a girl not be allowed to stay? Nancy was a girl, and she stayed in the house every night. For some reason El didn't feel comfortable asking any of this out loud, so she just nodded again, and looked downwards.

She had spent the day at the Wheeler's with Karen making good on her promise to help her with schooling. Most of the morning had been spent practicing writing, shaping each letter out over and over again, which El found both difficult and boring. The afternoon was a little better, since they sat together and read a story (it was called _The Magic Key_ ), but she hadn't liked the book much either. The story about two boys looking for their dog had seemed a little dull compared to the tale about sailors, magic islands and a cyclops that Mike had started to tell her the other night. She was still angry at herself for falling asleep before she got to hear the ending.

As the school came into view El felt her mood darken a little, but she pushed back the most unpleasant memories. Seeing it in the daytime was helpful, if anything, since with all the parents and excited children running about it seemed impossibly different to that violent night in late November. Instead it brought back memories of the first time she had been there, to use Mr. Clarke's radio. Dustin and Lucas had found her a dress, and pretty hair, and Mike had painted her face. She smiled at the memory.

"Okay Eleanor, just wait here by the gate and if you see them give them a wave." Karen touched her shoulder gently. "I'm just going to talk to Mr. and Mrs. Marsh quickly." She gestured to a slightly overweight and red-faced couple standing about twenty feet away.

El nodded, contenting herself with watching the throngs of people making their way out of school. She pressed her shoe into a patch of fresh snow, lifting it up to admire the pattern the neat pattern sole left behind.

It wasn't too long before she spotted Dustin and Lucas, who were wandering aimlessly across the schoolyard. It seemed to take them a second to realise that the girl in the big brown coat that was frantically waving at them was Eleven.

"Hi El!" Dustin shot one of his trademark grins, the one that made his eyes crinkle up in a way that always made El smile as well. "Didn't expect to see you here."

"Where are Mike and Will?"

"Oh, they're just coming." He replied hastily, but El noticed he seemed to shoot Lucas a worried glance. Was this about Will? He had been feeling a lot better lately, but the nasty feeling El got when he was around had also been creeping back.

"Are you new?" She was snapped out of her concern by a voice behind her. She turned around and saw a tall boy with sandy hair and pale blue eyes staring at her. "I don't think I've seen you in school before."

El stiffened, feeling a rising sense of panic as she realised she didn't know how she was meant to respond.

Thankfully, Dustin interjected. "She just moved here."

"But she's home schooled." Lucas added quickly.

"Oh." The boy adjusted the backpack hanging off his shoulder. "Well I'm Rob. How do you guys know each other?"

El looked at Dustin for help again. "Uh. She's my - I mean she's Mike's - cousin."

"Second cousin." El added, remembering the excuse from last time - she was Mike's second cousin from Sweden, whatever that meant.

"Well, welcome to Hawkins!" Rob had a friendly smile, El decided. "If you live here now you should get to know some people. I know it's a bit last minute, but a few of us are meeting in town tomorrow at three, at the Radio Shack. You should come along." He gestured at Lucas and Dustin, "you guys should come too. We don't hang out enough."

"Uh…yeah, thanks, um, maybe." Dustin stuttered. Even El noticed he seemed a little awkward all of a sudden.

"Well maybe see you guys then." Rob took a couple steps before catching himself and turning back around. "Hey, I forgot to even ask your name!"

She hesitated. "…El." She managed to mutter, remembering the boys' panicked reaction when she'd started to say her full name to Mr. Clarke.

"Cool." He turned to leave a second time, before adding, "I like your hair, El. It's very…punk."

She watched him walk off, her cheeks feeling strangely warm given the freezing weather. He liked her hair?

"What the hell was that about?" Lucas asked as soon as he was out of earshot. "He doesn't spend enough time with us?" Both he and Dustin burst out laughing.

"I think Rob Davenport is a fan of our very own El." Dustin said, nudging her. She knew from the look on his face that this was him _teasing_ her, something the boys did to each other all the time, but she wasn't sure why or what it meant on this occasion.

"Finally, what a ridiculous amount of time to take." Karen said, suddenly reappearing behind them. In the distance, Mike and Will were the two last figures to emerge from school, trudging slowly across the playground. As they got closer though, her anger flipped instantly to concern.

"Michael, honey what happened?" Karen rushed forward to meet him, bending down and embracing her son. Mike stood stiff as a streetlamp in her grip. She leaned backwards and held him at arms' length, staring at his face. It was only then that El saw what she was looking at. Mike's right eye was swollen and blueish, and just above it was an angry, crimson gash about two inches long.

"It's nothing Mom seriously." He wriggled free of her grip. "I fell at recess. Let's go home."

 _I fell at recess._

El had heard that excuse before. She took a couple of deep breaths, but she couldn't stop her jaw from clenching up, and heart began to pound fiercely in her chest. She dug her fingernails into the palm of her hand until it hurt, trying to stay calm, to stay in control, but it did little good. She spun around, looking for anyone else left out by the school gates, searching for Troy, or any other mouth breather that might have done this to him. She was only snapped out of it by feeling Dustin's hand on her arm. "It's ok, El, let's go."

She realised the others were all already walking back towards the car, with Karen beginning an interrogation. "It is not 'nothing', Michael. When we get home I'll put some antiseptic on it. And I want to know _exactly_ what happened." She could tell Mrs. Wheeler didn't believe Mike's story either.

El sat in the back on the drive home, but she couldn't take her eyes off Mike the entire way. He was slumped in his seat, staring out the window and answering each of his mom's relentless questions with just one word, or sometimes not answering at all. She didn't understand why anyone in the world would want to hurt _him_ , of all people.

She felt helpless. She wanted to do something, to make the pain go away or cheer him up somehow. When she felt sad he always seemed to notice, and seemed to always know what to do or say to take her mind off it.

Then she had an idea. El looked at the radio in the dashboard console. She switched it on, leaving the volume low, and began to focus. She could remember the song so clearly – the unusual melody, the deep voice, the words especially:

" _I'm happy, I hope you're happy too…"_

She kept moving through the airwaves looking for it. She stretched herself, fighting the aching pain in her head and searching farther and farther away, until she started to feel woozy and lose focus. There were so many channels, some of them seemed distant and far away, with people speaking strange languages, but none of them were playing the song. It wasn't there.

She fell back into her seat in exhaustion, discretely using her sleeve to wipe the blood from her nose. Maybe it was lucky she hadn't seen whoever did this outside the school, because she was pretty sure she wouldn't have been able to control herself. She would probably have made Dustin's promise come true. _Come back and she'll kill you_.

Once they reached the house, it took Mike some time to escape his Mom's worried cooing and fretting, as she dabbed his face with various cloths and applied creams to his cut. Eventually though they retreated to the basement and sat in their usual positions around the table, with an extra seat pulled up for El, in between Dustin and Mike.

"Are we going to finish the old campaign?" Lucas asked. The boys seemed determined not to mention what had happened to Mike. Maybe they knew it was best to move on as quickly as possible.

"No, we're teaching El how to play!" Dustin beamed, producing a box from under the table.

"We don't have to play D&D, if you don't want to." Will added quickly, but El shook her head pointing at the box in front of Dustin. She didn't understand anything about this game, but the boys loved it, so she had been looking forward to this all day.

"Choose a character." Dustin said, opening up the box to reveal a set of tiny figurines. "Will is a sorcerer, so he has magic powers, a little like you." Dustin grinned, producing Will's character from and handing it to him. "Lucas is a ranger, and I'm a warrior." He said proudly, pulling each of their small, painted heroes from the box.

El looked at the remaining choices, and she found her hand went straight towards one. She pulled out the figure, a woman with long blond hair, wearing a blue robe and holding a huge, leather bound book.

"A cleric?" Lucas asked, the surprise evident in his voice. "You sure you don't want to be a sorcerer?" He held up an old man with a long grey beard and a staff. El shook her head, placing her figure on the board with the others.

"Ok, El's a cleric." Dustin said. "New skills are good for the party – much better than doubling up one of our characters."

"So, the way the game works – Mike is the dungeon master." Lucas gestured at Mike, who hadn't said a single word since they got home. He was busy arranging something behind a large book he had propped upright on the table. "So he sets the story, but we can choose to make our characters do whatever we want."

"Then the dice are basically luck, or fate." Will said, picking up the two white cubes from the table. "So depending on how difficult your action is to complete, you'll have to roll a certain number or it won't work." He demonstrated this, sending the dice tumbling across the table.

El looked at her character again, admiring the golden hair that trailed all the way down to her lower back.

"What is…punk?" She asked suddenly, remembering Rob's comment from earlier. For some reason this caused Lucas and Dustin to stifle a laugh. She frowned.

"It's a type of music." Will began, getting visibly excited. "It's sort of angry, but it's really good. There's this band called The Clash, their slogan is ' _the only band that matters'_ , and they play-"

"That's not what Rob meant." Lucas interrupted him mid-sentence. "Punk can also mean like a style of clothes and hair and stuff. It was meant as a compliment."

"What Rob meant?" Mike suddenly spoke up. Out of the corner of her eye El saw Dustin smack his hand against his forehead.

"He came over after school while we were waiting for you guys. He wants us to hang out with him and his friends tomorrow." Lucas explained, rolling his eyes for effect. "Well, he wants El to go, but he'll accept us as baggage…"

"Rob-fucking-Davenport." Dustin said, shaking his head. "You shoulda been there."

"…Mouth breather?" El was concerned – she couldn't follow this conversation easily but she was pretty sure they didn't seem to like Rob. She looked at Mike's swollen eye again, feeling the rage beginning to resurface. Was he like Troy? Was he the one that had hurt Mike?

"No, El." Mike said gently. "He's nice…it's just we don't often…talk to people like him."

"That's one way of putting it." Lucas muttered.

"You should go tomorrow, El." Mike continued, scratching the back of his neck.

"Mike-" Dustin began, but Mike cut him off.

"We don't own her, Dustin." He said, before turning to look at her with a serious expression. "You should get to meet other people and, well, and do whatever you want to do. Hang out with Rob, or whoever. Don't feel like you have to be stuck with us all the time." El was confused. She had wanted to go, but now it was starting to sound like the others wouldn't be coming with her. She didn't feel _stuck_ with them at all.

"We can worry about all this tomorrow." Will said softly, trying to move the conversation on. "Right now, El is about to experience her first ever campaign."

"Yeah, let's hunt some monsters." Lucas rubbed his hands together in anticipation, and the strange atmosphere that El had felt suddenly entering the room began to dissipate again. "It's super easy to pick up, we'll tell you what to do."

She nodded, grabbing the dice from the table and passing them back to Will. They all turned expectantly towards their dungeon master.

"You're in a small village, in the foothills of a towering mountain range…"

Xx

 **January 18** **th**

It was 3am when he finally gave up on sleep, head pounding and lungs craving fresh air. He tiptoed around the others, all strung out on sleeping bags across the basement. Slipping on a pair of battered converse he quietly unlocked the basement door, creeping out and shutting it gently behind him.

The air was crisp and clear, the only sound coming from the quiet buzz of the power lines. There wasn't a porch out here, so he just took a few steps away from the door and leaned against the house, sliding down the wall to sit on the icy grass. He ran a hand through his air and allowed himself a few deep breaths, counting to ten in his head three times.

He felt like he was slowly losing control of everything. He knew he'd been stupid, overly fixated on how things would be when she came back. Now she was here the image was unravelling in slow motion in front of his eyes. In some ways what happened with Troy today was a welcome wake-up call. He could see clearly now, at least. He had to remind himself how innocent she was, how she wouldn't have even understood what a kiss meant, let alone begin to comprehend the amount of weight he had managed to attach to it over time.

That innocence was both the problem and the only thing he had left to hold on to. He knew that with each day that passed she would lose a little bit of that innocence, gradually lifting like a heavy winter fog, and once it was gone she would see him. _Really_ see him. The boy that played dungeons and dragons and sucked at sports, the boy that got beaten up at school and was so ugly he got called _frog-face_. When she eventually saw what the rest the world had to offer, and when the last of that fog had lifted, she would be gone too.

He tucked his hands under his arms for warmth and leaned back, enjoying the feel of the cold air against the throbbing bruise on his face. Slowly, as his thoughts began to clear, so did his headache.

A few minutes passed, before he heard the door open. Eleven walked out, wearing a pair of his dad's old slippers that must have been left near the back door, and the same oversized yellow t-shirt she'd shown up in all those weeks ago. As soon as she'd found out he still had it she'd insisted on wearing it to bed.

She didn't say anything, just slowly came and sat down next to him, their backs against the wall. They sat in silence like that for a while, just listening to the sound of their breathing and the hum of the power lines. He was glad she hadn't asked him any questions.

"Look." he said eventually, pointing upwards. "Do you see those three really bright stars, kind of in a row there, then those four that loop round at the bottom?" El nodded.

"That's called the big dipper." Nancy had pointed out loads of the constellations to him when he was younger, but the only one he was ever really sure he could find was the big dipper. It always seemed brighter than the others. He realised then that the concept of constellations would probably be beyond confusing for Eleven, who had spent her entire life trapped indoors. The thought of that deprived childhood always made him shudder.

"It's supposed to look like a spoon, or a plough. I think it looks more like…a brontosaurus. See, those three stars are the neck..." Stop talking, Mike. Stop talking.

"Bront...o...saw...?" El gave up on trying to force the word out.

"It's a type of animal - a dinosaur -well it was. There's none left now." El looked at him blankly. "A bit like Rory, my toy, remember? He's a dinosaur too, but a different type." And now you're actually talking about your fucking toy dinosaur. Nice going, Wheeler.

El just nodded, pointing up at the row of stars again. "Big dipper." She said seriously, like she was making a mental note of it. "Bronto-saurus." She was so earnest it made Mike feel like the shambles that just fell out of his mouth was actually vital information, like he'd just delivered a Carl Sagan-esque speech on the galaxy.

He shivered again and turned to glance at El, worried she was freezing to death, but her face looked perfectly content. He drank in the sight of her, with her knees pulled up to her chest, her body swallowed up by the oversized t-shirt. She was still fixated on the heavens, so enraptured by the new world around her that it seemed like he was intruding on a private moment, and watching it seemed so precious it was almost painful. Without looking away from the night sky, she reached out a hand, taking hold of Mike's. He knew her fingers were cold, but his were even colder, so they felt warm to the touch.

He focused on the details around him, hoping he would suddenly gain a photographic memory. He could live with this he decided. Take each day as it comes, steal glances at her when he can, spend as much time with her as possible. As long as he didn't get his hopes up, he would be okay. Don't fly too high, and you'll survive the fall.

Just being close to her, having her back in his life, was enough for him. More than enough. More than he deserved.

"Pretty." She said definitively, as if giving the universe her seal of approval.

"Really pretty." Mike agreed, though it wasn't the sky he was looking at.


	7. A Breakfast Without Eggos

**A Breakfast Without Eggos**

 _ **January 18th**_

El wasn't sure it was possible to feel this good. She wished her powers let her slow down time, or rewind it. She would replay this morning over and over again on a loop. Nothing remarkable had happened…but maybe that was the point – it had felt so wonderfully ordinary, like how she imagined normal kids felt every Saturday morning.

Last night she had come in from their little stargazing session completely frozen. She'd inched her sleeping bag over to Mike's, and, with teeth chattering, whispered that she was cold. Without saying anything, he'd slung his arm around her and pulled her close, their sleeping bags rustling together. Somehow, even though he'd been outside much longer than she had, and even though both of their sleeping bags separated them, El could feel the warmth of him against her back. She could also feel his breath gently against her neck.

She woke with her head resting on his arm. For the first time in as long as she could remember, she had slept through the whole night. No restless tossing, no dreams of darkness and wet floor and endless rows of sharp teeth. She had almost forgotten what it felt like to be fully rested.

In the morning they were all home alone (ignoring Nancy who had locked herself in her room), so Dustin decided to make his 'specialty': bacon and eggs.

" _This is going to change your life, El, trust me." He'd said._

" _Don't worry." Mike had whispered in her ear. "We have Eggos in the freezer just in case."_

They lay down on the couch while Dustin cooked, the boys all excited to show her a film called Star Wars _._ It didn't make a whole lot of sense at first, but Mike seemed to know when she was confused, and he would whisper little explanations to her.

" _The Empire are the bad men."_

" _Han Solo can understand Chewbacca."_

" _Luke is a Jedi, which means he's like you - he's special."_

Something about the way he said the last one made her cheeks warm. She went to rest her head on Mike's shoulder, and this time he didn't turn away.

The breakfast was good. The eggs were fluffy and the bacon was a wonderful mix of salty and crispy, and it was all washed down with tangy orange juice. Mike had poured a golden liquid over his own food, which for some reason made Dustin roll his eyes in frustration and complain loudly about taste buds, table manners, and mixing breakfast with dessert. Mike had ignored him, and given El a forkful, cursing a little as he spilt some on the couch.

" _It's maple syrup."_

It was better than good. It was sweet and sticky and made her want to lick her lips afterwards. For some reason the taste reminded her of the forest.

So that was how she had ended up here, belly full and sprawled out on the couch, wishing she could stop time as she watched what she now knew were called 'X-Wings' approaching the Death Star.

Crammed in next to them was Lucas and Will (thankfully Lucas was acting as a barrier between her and Will) while Dustin had commandeered Ted's La-Z-Boy. Pretty much the second after Luke fired the final shot to destroy the Death Star, a debate broke out.

"All I'm saying is if I was a force-wielding emperor building a planet-killing fake moon, I wouldn't build it with a hole that leads straight to the main reactor." Dustin mumbled through a full mouth. Somehow after that breakfast he was still hungry enough for popcorn…

"It's not like it was a deliberate feature, dumbass." Lucas replied pointedly, rolling his eyes. "And besides, the rebels only found out about it because they managed to steal the plans."

"Guys, please, do we have to have this debate _every_ time we watch Star Wars?" Will tried to interject, but you could tell from the tone of his voice he knew it was pointless.

"Sorry but it seems pretty deliberate to me..." Dustin continued, ignoring Will's protests. "Or did they 'accidentally' put in an exhaust vent that 'accidentally' led straight to the main reactor?"

"It still makes more sense than Lord of the Rings." Lucas said suddenly, causing Will to gasp. Mike had already told her that the Lord of the Rings vs Star Wars debate was as old as their friendship itself. In fact, apparently the first time Lucas met Dustin (in the fourth grade, when Dustin first moved to Hawkins) they had made each other cry by arguing over whether Yoda would beat Gandalf in a battle.

"Take that back!" Dustin shouted, throwing a piece of popcorn at him across the room. El giggled. She knew they were probably about to start fighting, but at this point she knew when to worry and when to just laugh.

"What, so it's not stupid that at the end of the third book a giant eagle comes along and saves the day?" Lucas was enjoying putting Dustin on the back foot. "Why not fly straight to mount Doom?" He yelled as he suddenly dived on top of Dustin on the La-Z-Boy.

"Shit!" Dustin yelled as the two grappled, the chair suddenly going fully reclined and almost throwing them both onto the floor.

"Don't break my dad's chair!" Mike yelled. El didn't need to look to know he was rolling his eyes at them. She had this growing urge to hold his hand again, like she had last night, so she acted on impulse slipping her hand into his. He looked down at her in surprise, his face turning ever so slightly red. His fingers closed around her hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. She shut her eyes, and with her head against his shoulder she could just hear the reassuring drum of his heartbeat over the noise of Dustin and Lucas fighting.

"Come with me?" She asked, looking up at him.

"Today, you mean?" Mike replied, and she nodded. If she couldn't go with them to see Rob then she didn't really want to go at all. "El I can't, I'm sorry. I have…I have to see the doctor." He looked away as he spoke.

"Ok." She said, trying not to sound too upset. Mike didn't seem to like going to the doctor, but Nancy said it was to stop him being sick, so she knew it was important.

"Besides, I don't think he wants us there." Mike said softly. Across the room the fight seemed to have finally ended, with Lucas grinning and Dustin dusting himself off, muttering something about cheating and being caught off guard.

"Yeah El, you should go." Lucas said, walking back to the couch. For some reason as soon as Lucas looked in their direction Mike quickly pulled his hand away from hers. "It's good to have other friends."

She just nodded slowly, a growing sense of dread building about this afternoon. At least she'd been able to enjoy this morning. Until today she hadn't known it was possible to feel so relaxed and carefree.

Xx

Mike had slept horribly. Or, to put it more accurately, he hadn't slept at all. How could he, with her back pressed up against his chest and his heart beating a thousand times a minute? He'd lain there stiff as a corpse all night, trying to keep perfectly still to avoid waking her.

"Five-hundred and thirty-four thousand." Dr. Barnett said with a sigh, a liver-spotted hand rubbing his forehead. "The average man in Indiana lives to seventy four. You're thirteen years old. That means you have five-hundred and thirty-four thousand hours left, Michael Wheeler. I, on the other hand, have considerably less than that. Do you really want to use _another_ one sitting here in silence?"

Mike continued to avoid eye contact. It was their third – and to date, by far their worst – session. He had barely said five words in total. He picked at a loose thread that was poking from the arm of the raggedy chair he was sat in. It was a deep, soft armchair, and he hand sunk into it so he was irritatingly low down, having to look up at the doctor.

"Your father wants you medicated, you know." Dr. Barnett said casually, causing Mike's head to snap up. He instantly cursed himself for giving him the reaction he wanted. "He's convinced you're suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. He wants you put on Prozac, or Sertraline. Of course with both of those drugs there are some not-inconsiderable side effects…"

"I don't need drugs." Mike said forcefully. "My dad doesn't know anything about this." _My Dad doesn't know about anything_ , he wanted to add. He knew his parents had told Dr. Barnett about what had happened with Will last year. Well, they had told him the official story at least, since that was all they knew. Will had been abducted by a high level child trafficking group. They had attempted to fake his death, with the help of some corrupt officers in the state police.

"I'm on your side, Michael." Dr. Barnett said, leaning back and twirling his pen nonchalantly between his bony fingers. "I agree with you completely. Besides, medication wouldn't help someone with your condition."

"My 'condition'?" Mike asked, frustrated that he was being sucked into this obvious game of cat and mouse.

"You mean you don't know what's wrong with you?" Dr. Barnett's hands drummed against his brown corduroy pants. His fingernails were weirdly long, with dirt visible under them. "You're a smart boy, Michael. I assumed you'd known this whole time."

"Isn't that what you're paid for?" Mike asked, sighing. "To figure it out?"

"So you admit there is _something_ wrong with you, at least?" There was a smug smirk on his face, like he knew he'd backed Mike into a corner. He had decided on an entirely different personality for this session; the irritating but friendly doctor was replaced by a complete jackass.

"Congratulations." Mike said bitterly. "I'm glad this has all been such a fun game."

The doctor sighed, scribbling a final note on his clipboard before putting it on the mahogany table by his chair. "You don't have PTSD, Michael. You're just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill fantasist."

"Fantasist?" Mike looked at him blankly, waiting for an explanation.

"You refuse to face reality, or to assign yourself any responsibility for your own life, your own happiness. You prefer to hide away in fantasy. You imagine you're more popular at school…"

Mike cringed at that comment. In the grand scheme of things he didn't have it _so_ bad at school. It was only Troy that caused them problems, and besides, it wasn't like he didn't have any friends.

"…or you imagine a version of events where November never happened…"

To be fair he couldn't deny that he'd spent hours wondering what if. What if Will had been picked up by Jonathan that night? What if Will hadn't rolled a seven? What if he'd never met El?

"…Or you hide away in those games, where you're busy fighting dragons or saving princesses..."

He cringed again, at that horrific description of D&D. His parents must have said more than he realised. Still, it was just a game. It was fun, and he liked making up stories – he didn't see what was so bad about that.

"In moderation, having that sort of imagination is fine." Dr. Barnett seemed to read his thoughts. "But you use these fantasies as a smokescreen, while you tell yourself that you have no control over the real world, and you're just a victim of your circumstances…doomed to be unhappy."

Mike went back to picking the thread in the armchair, which made a gentle ripping sound as it zigzagged out of the fabric. Maybe if he kept pulling, eventually the entire chair would just crumble beneath him into a pile of loose string.

"To be honest, there's nothing _I_ can do to help with any of this." The doctor stood up, signalling that the session was almost over. "But Michael, every person has certain things – I like to call them tethers – that pull right at their subconscious. Things that keep you invested in reality, that either give you a purpose in life or just some reason to feel happy about yourself."

Mike stood up as well, slipping his arms into his jacket. He wasn't sure he could take any more of this new age hippie crap without throwing up. Wasn't this supposed to be the sort of thing people talked about in the 1960s, when his parents were students? It was _1984_ , for Christ's sake.

"They can be small, like a hobby, or a piece of art that means something to you, or they can be big – like a loved one or a dream job to strive towards. These are the things that make us who we are, that keep reminding us that our lives all have their own meanings." Mike opened the door, and was greeted by the wind howling down Main Street. The session had finished early, so he'd have to wait out in the cold for a while.

The doctor touched him on the shoulder. "You need to find your tethers, Michael. Find them and climb out of your own head!"

He just shrugged, pulling his coat up to shield his face and stepping out onto the sidewalk.

Xx

El was nervous. The shaking hands, the dry throat, it reminded her of how she felt each time she stepped into the water tank. Meeting new people was stressful, especially meeting lots of new people at once. Joyce had dropped her at the Radio Shack, and now she was stood with her hands in the pockets of her new coat, waiting for the others to arrive.

Rob was first to arrive, rounding the corner and giving her a wave. He seemed to take little notice of the redheaded girl next to him talking excitedly into his ear. Next to them were two other boys, both fairly tall and gangly looking. They were all holding these strange, oval bits of wood under their arms, which had wheels attached to the bottom and were covered in bright patterns.

"Hey El." Rob smiled, walking over to greet her. He was wearing a grey hoodie and a black beanie that covered his ears, so there were just a couple of strands of blond hair peeking out the front. "I'm glad you came. Where are your friends?"

"It's good to…have other friends." El said simply, repeating Lucas's words from this morning.

Rob laughed. "Yeah, I suppose it is." He gestured to the two boys, "this is Jake and Justin, they're twins."

"Double-Jay" they both said, closing their hands into fists and bumping them together. They were both the exact same height, at least a foot taller than El. They also had the same straight, long brown hair, except Jake had it swept over his left eye, Justin over his right.

"Whatever you do don't call them that, El. No-one calls them that." The red-headed girl said, walking over. "It's never going to catch on guys…"

The pair sighed, going back to their conversation.

"And this is Max." Rob nodded to her.

She was very pretty, El thought, with bright blue eyes that stood out against her pale skin, and this long, slightly wavy red hair that stretched down to her lower back. It looked so soft El wanted to reach out and touch it, but she knew she probably shouldn't.

"So, do you skate?" Max asked, tucking one of the loose crimson strands behind her ear.

"I…I don't know." El said slowly, looking to Rob for some kind of guidance.

"Oh, you mean you don't know how?" Rob assumed, raising an eyebrow. "It's fun, we can teach you if you'd like?"

She nodded, still completely unaware of what they were talking about. "Cool, let's go to the library then." Rob said, taking her by the arm.

They walked up a few streets, Rob hanging back to talk to El while the others went ahead. She noticed Max kept occasionally glancing back at the two of them.

"So, where are you from, originally?" Rob asked, playing with the zip on his jacket.

"Sweden." She replied instantly, still not really sure what it meant.

"Wow." Rob said, looking genuinely surprised. "I wouldn't have guessed. You don't really have an accent. Then again, I haven't really heard you say much..."

El looked down, fiddling with the hem of her skirt.

"I didn't mean that in a bad way." He said quickly, touching her arm. "It's kind of nice actually. Most of the girls at our school never shut up, it's always 'can you believe what Joe did? James said that Heather said that Jenny's sister fancies Austin…'"

El laughed, mostly at the high-pitched impression he was doing rather than the actual words. She didn't know the girls from school. Eventually they reached the library, which was a tall, impressive building, with a grand set of steps with guard rails either side of them. El quickly saw why this was where they had chosen, and she also quickly realised, with some horror, what 'skating' was. The boys began bumping down the steps on the strange four-wheeled boards, jumping and – more often than not – falling off. It looked painful, if anything.

"Don't worry, you don't have to skate if you don't want to." Rob said, laughing at the obvious expression of terror on her face. "Let's just sit and talk, is that okay?" El smiled in relief, nodding eagerly. They sat on a bench, watching as Max and the boys took turns tackling the steps.

"I can't believe you're Mike Wheeler's cousin." El felt strangely exposed as his eyes studied her face carefully.

"Second cousin." She corrected.

"I guess that makes all the difference." Rob laughed. "You look nothing like him."

"Who hurt him?" El changed the subject suddenly, asking what had been on her mind ever since she had seen him outside the school.

"Oh, his black eye?" Rob sighed. "Some jackass named Troy, he just launched at Mike for no reason after school. I'm pretty sure he's got about four brain cells in total."

El shuddered at the name. "Mouth breather." She said angrily.

Rob laughed. "Yeah, he is. I mean, just because Mike's a bit weird, doesn't mean he deserves that."

El shook her head. "Mike…Mike is not weird." She said forcefully. She knew enough about the tone of people's voices to know that 'weird' was not a compliment.

"Oh no, no of course he's not." Rob stuttered, "I just meant he's not too popular at school, you know? I didn't mean anything bad by it." El nodded. She watched as Max managed to jump the last few steps and land again, whooping and turning to mock the boys.

"Are you sure you don't want to try it?" Rob asked. "We'll start slow, just on the flat ground – it's super easy." She didn't really want to, but she didn't want to let them down either. Cautiously, she nodded.

"This is my board." He handed her the strange looking thing, the bottom of which was covered in a large drawing of a skull, with two feathered wings sprouting from either side of the head. She quickly turned it over to hide the gruesome image. "I call it KITT, like in Night Rider, you know?"

"You aren't really dressed for this are you?" He laughed as they stood up. El looked at Max, who was wearing jeans with rips in them and a hoodie. El felt self-conscious; she had chosen clothes she thought looked pretty, the sort of thing Nancy might wear, but maybe she had chosen wrong.

"Here, put one foot on the front…" Rob took the board and placed it down, showing her how to stand. "I won't let go, you aren't gonna fall." Slowly, he placed one hand on her back and the other on her waist, and began to push her forward.

"Now, if you can, take your right foot off the board and push forward against the ground." El tried, wobbling but feeling Rob's hands steady her with a chuckle.

"I'm going to let go now, okay? Try and push yourself over to the other side." Rob said, slowly lifting his hands away. El flinched. She was rolling forward so slowly but she was still strangely scared. It took all her focus not to use her powers to stop the board. El couldn't understand why people chose to use these boards instead of cycling. This was nothing like the feeling she got when she was on the back of Mike's bike – when she didn't have to think about anything except watching the buildings go past and the feeling of the wind against her face, and the faint-but-noticeable lemony smell from Mike's shirt.

 _It's this fabric softener my mom buys. Everything smells of fucking lemons._

"Look out!" She heard a voice call out behind her. El turned to look, before realising she should have been paying attention to what was in front of her. She had reached the curb, and front of the board suddenly dipped, throwing her forwards. She fell into the road, scraping her hands and knees against the stone surface. She winced. At least there was no car coming, and thankfully somehow she had avoided using her powers.

"Are you okay?" Rob came bounding over, helping her up. It was only a scrape. "Sorry, maybe I let you go too quickly."

"I'm fine." She mumbled, brushing her hands against the side of her dress. "I don't want to skate." She said quickly, hoping he wasn't going to make her try again.

"Yeah sure, of course not!" Rob said quickly. "It's not for everyone." He seemed to notice her knee, which was bleeding slightly. "Let's go get you a Band-Aid okay? There's a 7-Eleven on Main and Maple."

She nodded, and they set off back down the road. She felt something touch her hand, and saw Rob had reached out to hold it. El flinched, a little surprised at the contact.

"Oh…would you rather I didn't?" Rob nodded at their interlocking fingers, looking a little crestfallen.

El forced a smile and shook her head. "It's fine." Normally she hated being touched, but she didn't want to hurt her new friend's feelings. Maybe this is how Mike had felt earlier, when he'd quickly pulled his hand away from hers? Her head started to ache suddenly – it was overwhelming how confusing and new all of this was.

"I hope this hasn't ruined your day." Rob said, looking at her knee. She shook her head rapidly. On her scale of pain, this was nothing. "Good. We can get a soda in the store as well." Rob said, and El smiled. She'd only had soda once before – Joyce had given her lemonade – but it had been amazing, sweet and sour at the same time, and bubbly on her tongue.

"Hey, isn't that Mike?" Rob asked suddenly, as they rounded the corner back onto Main Street. Sure enough, stood waiting on the sidewalk El could see him, hands tucked into the pockets of his favorite beige jacket. He was shuffling back and forth, looking both ways up the road like he was waiting for a car to arrive.

"Mike!" She called out to him as they got closer, and he spun round. He looked surprised to see them, his eyes widening for a split second.

"Oh, hey guys." He mumbled.

El beamed. She hadn't been having a bad time, but just seeing him lifted some of her stress away and brought her a weird sense of calm. "We're going to get soda." She said happily.

"That's great, El." He smiled a little, but he was looking down at the asphalt. "I'm just waiting for my mom."

"Your eye looks a bit better dude." Rob said, nodding at the slightly-less-blue-than-yesterday bruise on Mike's face.

"Thanks." Mike said simply. El saw him catch sight of her knee, and he looked up at her, the worry evident in his eyes. "Are you okay, El? What happened?"

"She just fell off the board," Rob gestured to KITT under his arm. "We're going to get her a Band-Aid now."

Mike ignored him and kept looking at her. "You sure you're alright El? You can come home with me if you want? Just say so…"

El shook her head. "Fine. Having fun." She said, smiling at him. The whole point of today was that she was trying to be more independent - she didn't want him worrying about her all the time.

"She's fine dude, relax." Rob said, rolling his eyes. "Let's go, El." He pulled her by the hand, encouraging her to follow. "Bye Mike!" She said cheerily.

"Goodbye, El." She caught a flash of his eyes before he looked away. They were her favorite thing about him, always so pretty and warm and inviting beneath those big eyelashes – but something about the look she just saw in them worried her. She hoped his visit to the doctor had been okay.

The rest of the afternoon went by quickly. The twins and Max joined them, and they sat outside the 7Eleven drinking Sprite and talking, Rob mostly telling stories about school, or skateboarding injuries they had all suffered. Once last summer, Jake had shoplifted and they'd all been chased by an angry storeowner, having to skate across a busy highway to escape. El remembered the time she took Eggos from the store without paying – it wasn't something she ever wanted to do again.

She enjoyed the stories, but mostly she was impressed by Max. In all the adventures Rob had described she was always brave, and seemed to keep her cool.

When four o'clock came, Jonathan arrived to pick her back up from the Radio Shack and take her home. She felt strangely tired, drained from trying hard to appear normal all day. That was what was so nice about being around the boys – they knew everything already, she didn't have to hide.

When she got home, there was a strange woman in the house, sat with Joyce at the kitchen table. She had shoulder-length brown hair and wide glasses.

"Are you sure you don't want a drink? Coffee, tea?" Joyce asked her, standing up to look get a glass. "I have something stronger if you prefer…" Joyce gestured at the cupboard where El now knew she kept her 'adult drinks', the ones she seemed to have every evening after work.

"No, really I'm fine Joyce, thank you." The woman seemed agitated, El thought. She walked past them to sit on the sofa, Joyce giving her a wave and a smile. "I'm sorry to drop in like this unannounced; it should be a quick visit." The woman continued.

"So what exactly brings you here Florence?" Joyce asked, taking a bottle from the 'adult' cupboard and pouring a splash of the brown liquid into a tumbler for herself.

"Well, I haven't been able to get something off my mind. You went to school with Jim right? Jim Hopper, I mean." The brown haired woman suddenly looked very serious. "Would you say you know him well?"

"Sure, I went to school with Hop." Joyce sat down, taking a sip of the brown liquid. It was pungent, El thought, she could smell it from across the room. "We don't always do a good job of keeping in touch, but I know him as well as anyone I guess…I definitely owe him a lot."

"He's been gone for the last few days." Florence said, removing her glasses and placing them on the table. "He left a note saying he's visiting his sister, and he had some family issues to deal with."

Joyce looked confused. "Flo…"

"I know, I know." The woman said. "I'm overreacting, but it just seemed a little unlike him. He's disappeared before but never-"

"No, that's not what I meant." Joyce reached over the table and took the other woman's hand. "Flo…" Joyce seemed to hesitate, before looking the other woman in the eyes. "Hop doesn't have a sister…"

Xx

 _ **So…I'm super sorry this took so long – I've had a crazy busy week, covering shifts in my evening job and work etc.**_

 _ **Anyway, thanks so much for reading and the nice reviews – it really helped motivate me to get this done! Love you all.**_


	8. Good Vibrations

**Good Vibrations**

 ** _January 19th_**

"So what are we looking for exactly?" Lucas dumped his bike in the tall grass at the entrance to the junkyard. There was no snow left at all, but it was still frosty, so the grass crunched under the weight.

"It has to be in good condition – nothing water damaged." Dustin was already animated about this mission. "Just find one that looks good, then I'll test it with the voltmeter." He took off his rucksack and pulled out a bundle of wires, wrapped around a toilet roll tube.

"And you're sure this is safe?" Will asked sheepishly.

"Trust me you guys, I know what I'm doing. Just don't touch anything." Mike was pretty sure their parents would flip if they knew they were messing around with car batteries, but then Dustin was usually pretty smart about this stuff. Besides, a portable speaker had been the only concept they could all agree on for the science fair, and _anything_ was better than Dustin's ridiculous catapult.

They spread out and Mike went off by himself, walking between the rusted vehicles searching for a possible target, whatever that might look like. He ignored at least a dozen crushed or burnt out chassis until he saw an old VW Beetle that looked in decent shape, and began to prise open the hood.

Inside, there was just a gaping hole where there had once been an engine, battery, carburettor and everything else that made it function. There was something tragic about a car that looked fine on the outside, but had nothing under the hood. It was like him really – it still looked like a car but now it had no purpose, no way to actually move forward. It was just sat here gradually getting eaten by rust.

He slammed the hood shut. Really this wave of self-pity was just because he was angry at himself for behaving like a jackass all morning. He'd been sulky and quiet, which was nothing new, but he'd also been cold to El, and she'd looked at him with those confused eyes that he found both adorable and upsetting. He hadn't meant to take it out on her, but each time he looked at her he was reminded of yesterday on Main Street, and Rob's stupid smug face while he led her away. The worst part was he only had himself to blame. He'd been the one who encouraged her to go.

"I got something!" Lucas's voice rang out from across the junkyard. Mike was instantly glad to be separated from his thoughts, rushing over to join the others.

"Hmm…it could work." They all stood around while Dustin inspected the battery like some seasoned mechanic. It was a not-too-old looking Cadillac, with the wheels missing and the seats gone, but apart from that it looked relatively untouched.

Dustin pulled out a pair of long, bright pink rubber gloves from his bag. They had small white flowers on them and a fluffy fur trim around the bottom, with the words 'Best Mom Ever' written across each glove.

"Don't fucking say anything." Dustin said pre-emptively, shooting them all a glare as Lucas and Will snickered. "I need protection when I handle it." He reached in and unclipped the battery, before holding up the home-made voltmeter.

"How does this work again?" Will asked, staring at the bundle of wires.

"Do _none_ of you knuckleheads listen in science?" Dustin sighed. "Electricity creates a magnetic field. So when I clip these wires to each end of the battery, if there's electricity it should turn the coil into a magnet, and pick up anything metal." He attached the wires carefully. "Assuming there's some juice left in this thing…"

Slowly he held up a paperclip, lifting it nearer the toilet roll tube until it suddenly jumped and stuck against the wires.

"Boom." He said triumphantly. "Gentlemen…and lady…" he nodded at El, "we have our power source."

Xx

On the ride home, El was on the back of Lucas's bike. She wasn't sure why, but something had told her that Mike wanted to be alone. Dustin was carrying the battery, and Will wasn't an option (the nausea was so bad she was worried she'd throw up if she had to share his bike), so here she was holding onto Lucas as they sped through town. Her arms were loose around his waist. She had to admit to herself that when it was Mike she held on a little tighter than she really needed to. She missed the smell of lemons from his shirt.

They road down Main Street, past three police cars all lined up. Some of the officers were pinning up posters, while others were talking to people on the sidewalk.

"I wonder what happened…" Lucas asked the others, slowing down the frantic pace of his pedalling to get a better look.

"Maybe someone went missing?" Dustin shouted, leaning back and letting go of his handlebars as they slowed to a steady cruise. El wondered if it had anything to do with the conversation she'd overheard Joyce have yesterday, about the policeman Mr. Hopper. She was about to say something when Lucas suddenly sped up again.

"Let's go guys, we can worry about this later, we have a speaker to build!"

When they got back to Will's house – or home, as Joyce kept telling El to call it – the boys began collecting various parts from around the house. The plan was simple, at least according to Dustin. They already had Jonathan's broken old speaker (a big brown box that was almost as tall as El) and a portable radio. All they had to do was fix the speaker, re-wire it to the car battery and fit it with a switch. Then they were going strap on some wheels and a handle to pull it along with.

El found it fascinating, watching as Dustin and Lucas leaned over the speaker on the living room floor, arguing over where each wire belonged. She wanted to watch for longer, but sitting in such close quarters near Will was making her unwell. She didn't understand it – he looked perfectly healthy, back to normal even – but ever since she saw him hunched over the toilet the nausea she felt had been getting gradually worse each day. There was this stench that seeped out of him – it reminded her of it, of that place, or worse, of that…thing.

She tried to hide a shudder and stood up, going to sit down next to Mike on the stripy yellow couch.

"How does it work?" She asked him, hoping his mood had improved. Normally she knew that even when he was like this – detached and in his own world, like he was in the room but _not_ in the room at the same time – he was still always happy to answer her questions.

"The speaker?" He asked, turning to look at her.

She shook her head. "Sound." She corrected, stealing a glimpse at his eyes before he quickly looked away again. She was getting better at it, she thought, at seeing the secret sadness Nancy had talked about. Or maybe Mike was getting worse at hiding it.

"Oh." Mike shifted in his seat. "Sound…is just vibrations." he began. "The air is made up of lots and lots of tiny little particles, so small we can't see them. When I speak, my vocal chords are moving the particles, making them shake."

El wasn't sure she understood. How could _words_ come from things shaking?

"Wait one sec." Mike sensed her confusion and stood up, walking into the kitchen. El could hear him opening and closing cupboards until eventually he came back, holding a handful of frozen peas. He placed them in a bundle together on the seat of the couch between them.

"Imagine these are the little particles in the air. If I hit one…" He flicked a pea, and it bumped into all the others, sending them fanning outwards. "It starts a wave. When I speak it's the same...my throat moves the particles, and they keep bumping into each other, getting closer and closer to you…"

Mike leaned forward as he spoke, bringing his face right up against El's. She felt her breath become trapped in her chest. "Until they go right...into…your ear…" He whispered the last words directly into her ear, his breath tickling against her skin. El smiled. She sort of understood what he was trying to explain.

"Would you two care to give us a hand at some point?" Dustin said suddenly, bringing El crashing back into the room. Mike quickly jerked away from her, almost like she'd used her powers to send him flying across the couch.

"I mean, we're just trying to fix a speaker…" Dustin said, rolling his eyes. "So it's not like the president of the AV club and a girl who can control radio waves with her mind would be of any use…"

It took them another two hours, but finally they got it working. The boys all erupted in cheers when music began to play.

" _I'm a man without conviction_

 _I'm a man who doesn't know_

 _How to sale a contradiction_

 _You come and go, you come and go_

 _Karma karma karma karma karma chameleon…."_

El looked at Mike and laughed as he covered his ears and pulled an exaggerated face of anguish. His small smile gave away the joke.

"I can't believe we did it." Dustin said, turning the music back down. "We have this sucker locked up!"

"Yeah." Lucas agreed, high-fiving him. "I'd like to see them try and give first place to some meat heads with a stupid bottle rocket _this_ year."

They all lay on the living room floor for a while, listening to music on _The Hawk_ and chatting. Dustin eventually sat up, shuffling closer to El.

"So…was Max there yesterday?" He asked her casually.

"Yes." She replied, smiling. "Pretty."

"You don't need to tell Dustin that." Lucas said, receiving a punch in the arm from Dustin for his troubles. "He's been all over her ever since she joined the school last semester."

"So…did she mention me?" Dustin asked. For some reason it seemed like a really important question to him, which El thought was strange. Why would Max have mentioned Dustin? She wanted to say yes, since she figured that was the answer he wanted to hear.

"No." She said quietly, avoiding the urge to lie.

"That's okay." Dustin paused. "What about anyone else?"

"You're seriously asking if she mentioned _anyone_ else? Like all day, if Max mentioned a single other human being?" Lucas asked, laughing.

"Fine." Dustin spat. "…did she use the word 'boyfriend' ever?"

El shook her head again.

"Okay. That's good." Dustin breathed a sigh of relief, lying back down. "That's good." He repeated.

"What's a boyfriend?" El asked, wondering why that answer was such good news.

"Oh…uh, well if a girl and a boy like each other…" he paused, seeming to search for the right words. "If they like each other more than friends, then sometimes they become boyfriend and girlfriend."

"More than friends?" El asked.

Dustin looked flustered. "Ey, help me out here someone? Mikey boy?" He looked at Mike, but Mike just stood up and quickly walked out into the kitchen. "Or not, whatever…" Dustin laughed.

"El, if you like someone more than a friend it means you want to be close to them…you think they look handsome, or pretty or…whatever." Lucas said with a shrug. "If they like you too then you become a 'couple'. You hold their hand and kiss and do all that other couple-y shit." He stuck out his tongue in disgust.

 _Mike._

El thought of him instantly. Maybe that was why she felt different when she was around him? She definitely thought he was pretty. The prettiest. And she wanted to hold his hand. She would probably want to kiss him too, if she knew what it meant.

" _Not a friend"_

She remembered what Mike had said about going to the Snowball. If you didn't go with a sister or a friend, maybe you went as 'couple'? Maybe that meant that Mike liked her more than a friend as well? Or at least maybe he had last November. A lot seemed different with him now.

"Anyway, we should probably tidy up before Will's mom gets back." Dustin said, standing up. It was only then that they all looked at the floor, and saw it was covered in tools, bits of clipped copper wire, duct tape and wood splinters.

"Shit." Lucas said. "Ey Mike! Get in here and help!" He called.

When Mike returned they began tidying. El was sweeping up the floor, unable to resist using her powers a little when no one was looking, floating bits of wire and wood into the dustpan.

"Hey guys, where's Will?" Dustin asked as they worked, peering into the kitchen.

"Oh yeah." Lucas looked around in surprise. "He was so quiet we didn't even notice him leave..."

"Probably in the can." Dustin shrugged. "Little shit snuck off to the toilet for a dump while we're here working away like Cinderellas." He shook his head incredulously.

By the time they finished the living room was spotless. Or at least, it was back to the state of mild disarray they had found it in. If anything, the whole exercise had probably been a good thing – El had found so much dirt in the carpet that she wasn't sure when it had last been properly cleaned, if ever.

She went to the kitchen for a glass of water and saw Mike by the sink. When he turned to look at her, for some reason all she could focus on was his black eye again, and she felt the familiar rage build up inside her.

"Why did Troy hurt you?" She pointed to the eye, which was getting better but was still a pale shade of blue.

"What?" Mike asked, becoming flustered. He leaned against the worktop and ran a hand through his hair. "He didn't hurt me. I told you, I fell during recess."

"Mike. Friends don't lie…" She used the old phrase that she hadn't used in months. She tried to tell him with her eyes that he could trust her, he could tell her anything. "Rob said that Troy hit you after-"

Suddenly Mike seemed to snap. "Rob said?" he asked, stepping away from her. He looked almost angry. "If Rob knows so much about it why do you need to talk to me?"

"Mike, I-" El began, her head reeling at this sudden change of mood.

"No, El." He said forcefully. "I don't want to talk about it. And I don't want to talk about fucking _Rob._ " He turned and walked out of the room.

El spent a minute by the sink, collecting herself. A couple of tears managed to escape from her eyes in a bid for freedom, but she choked the rest back. She poured herself the glass of water she had come in for and drank it quickly.

She wanted air, so she walked into the living room, ignoring Mike who was now sat on the couch, and picked up a box of tools that she knew belonged out in the shed.

When she walked down the steps outside she was met by Buster, who smiled and licked at her shins, before sprinting off and returning with a tennis ball. He dropped it at her feet, then proceeded to take a few steps back and begin barking at her expectantly.

El smiled, not having to put down the toolbox as she lifted the ball with her mind, sending it flying across the yard. There was a reason that goofy dog liked her so much. She slipped into the shed and placed the box on a shelf.

When she came back outside though, she was surprised to be met by Will, who was standing a few feet from the door. Something about his posture was odd, and it made El stop in her tracks. His head was hung low and his arms were hanging almost limply at his side.

"Hi." She said softly, but he didn't reply. Instead he just took a step closer. She felt the familiar nausea begin to build in her stomach. It threatened to spill over as he took another step forward. He was only a few feet away from her now. When he took a third step, she stepped back as well, maintaining the distance between them.

"Will?" She tried to look him in the eye, but his head was downcast and his eyelids were almost closed. For some reason she felt frightened, more frightened than she had in a long time.

Suddenly Buster barked, making her almost jump out of her skin. Except this time he wasn't barking to ask her to throw the ball, he was barking – and growling – at Will, the hairs on his back standing on end. Will didn't even react.

Then, in a sudden movement too quick to give her time to react, Will closed the gap between them. His arm shot up and clasped around El's throat. Slowly, he raised his head, and she saw his eyes.

They were black.

Not just the iris, but the entire eyeball was a cloudy, murky black color.

She felt Will's grip on her throat tighten. She tried to focus, to throw him off with her mind, but it was difficult. The nausea in her stomach and the difficulty she was having breathing made it impossible for her to concentrate hard enough to use her powers. She could feel the air escaping her lungs but she was unable to gasp to fill them up again. She felt like she might die if she didn't take another breath soon.

Suddenly, for a brief second Will's grip loosened, and he let out a strange noise. El looked down and saw Buster's teeth planted firmly around Will's leg. She took her moment, narrowing her eyes and managing to push him away from her. She had wanted to throw him a few meters, but a few inches seemed to be all she could manage.

El paused, but Will – except whatever this was, El knew it wasn't Will – reached down and hurled Buster away, the dog whimpering as it landed and scampering off. He took another step towards her, and this time El didn't hesitate.

She ran.

She ran past the shed, and into the woods. She heard footsteps behind her so she kept running, doing her best to breathe deeply even though her throat still ached. She weaved through the trees, past castle Byers, even going past the boundaries of the lab. She ran and she didn't dare look back.


	9. Illithid

_**I'm so sorry! I'm a terrible person for leaving you all on a cliff hanger for months...**_

 _ **I've been so busy with other stuff (work, exams, drama with friends, falling in love, getting my heart broken, university...) that I really didn't have the time. But I had a plan for this story and I really wanted to see it through! Thanks so much to the lovely commenters for encouraging me to continue as well – it made me really want to come back to this.**_

 _ **I've started with a tiny flashback to the last chapter, since it's been a while...**_

 _ **Illithid**_

 _She felt Will's grip on her throat tighten. She tried to focus, to throw him off with her mind, but it was difficult. The nausea in her stomach and the difficulty she was having breathing made it impossible for her to concentrate hard enough to use her powers. She could feel the air escaping her lungs but she was unable to gasp to fill them up again. She felt like she might die if she didn't take another breath soon._

 _Suddenly, for a brief second Will's grip loosened, and he let out a strange noise. El looked down and saw Buster's teeth planted firmly around Will's leg. She took her moment, narrowing her eyes and managing to push him away from her. She had wanted to throw him a few meters, but a few inches seemed to be all she could manage._

 _El paused, but Will – except whatever this was, El knew it wasn't Will – reached down and hurled Buster away, the dog whimpering as it landed and scampering off. He took another step towards her, and this time El didn't hesitate._

 _She ran._

 **January 19** **th**

"El, where are you? Eleven?" Their screams were beginning to sound weaker. Mike was bellowing with so much force that his throat was raw, and each time he sucked in the cold air it burned its way down to his lungs.

"Will!" Dustin threw his arms in the air in exasperation. "Where the hell did they go?"

There was something odd about the scene; the shed door lying open as if the pair of them had just evaporated into thin air. Or even worse – the thought that none of them wanted to even entertain – that they had been transported _somewhere else_.

"I have a bad feeling about this." Lucas had his hands folded against the back of his head, Dustin was looking back at him with an equally lost expression. Mike was still in the trees, screaming Eleven's name into the empty branches.

"Is there somewhere they could have gone, logically?" Dustin asked once they'd eventually persuaded Mike to come back inside. Their homemade speaker still lay innocently on the floor of the living room, taunting them with the memory of how simple life had seemed even just a few minutes ago.

"Nowhere they could need to go so suddenly." Mike muttered.

"Someone must have been chasing them. Or _something_. Unless they went back...there..." Lucas said. "What do we do?" He punched the arm of the couch in frustration.

"We get help this time." Mike suddenly felt his head clear. "We can't afford to waste any more time – Hopper will help us." He walked to the phone and dialled the police station.

"Hawkins County Sheriff's Office, how can I help?" Mike vaguely recognised the female voice at the other end of the line.

"Is Chief Hopper there? It's urgent." He didn't really need to say it was urgent, he was pretty sure the quiver in his voice and the speed he spoke at was enough of an indicator that this wasn't exactly a social call.

"Oh, I'm sorry, the Chief is actually...well to be honest he's missing at the moment I'm afraid, no one knows where he is..." There was a pause on the line, "Who am I speaking to?"

Mike covered the receiver with the palm of his hand and turned to the others. "Hopper is missing!" He lifted his hand again, speaking into the phone. "It's Michael Wheeler."

Dustin and Lucas looked at each other, their glances conveying the same instant recognition. That explained the posters they had seen around town earlier. Will, El, and now Hopper. Something _was_ going on, and there was an ominous feel about it.

"Is everything ok Michael?" The woman asked, her voice soft with worry. "Why do you need to speak to the Chief?"

"No, everything is not okay." He said firmly. Behind him he could tell Lucas and Dustin had already stood up and begun heading for the door. "Will Byers and El..." He struggled to think of the right surname. "It doesn't matter. Will and El are missing. You need to start looking for them, now." He slammed down the receiver.

"Where to?" Dustin asked as they lifted their bikes. The saddles were unpleasantly cold from having been out in the winter air.

"My place first." Mike said, setting off at a quick pace.

"Why there?" Lucas yelled after him. It was possible El had gone back there, he supposed.

"Nancy!" Mike shouted. It was only then that it dawned on the other two – if Will, El, and Hopper were gone, then there was a chance that everyone who had been involved last November was getting picked off, one by one.

When they arrived the front door to the Wheelers' house was wide open. Mike stumbled as he flung his bike down, charging through and into the kitchen, screaming "Nancy!" with what little voice he had left. He was petrified that he was already too late.

"What the hell Mike?!" Nancy was sat at the kitchen table, nonchalantly sipping a cup of cocoa. Sat opposite her, but with her head turned to face Mike, was Eleven.

"Oh my god, El!" He embraced her, kneeling next to her chair and pulling her in as close as he possibly could.

"...Mike" She wheezed, clearly struggling under the weight of his embrace.

"Sorry." He released his grip and leaned back. In under a second he had mentally appraised her wellbeing. She looked unharmed, no obvious cuts or bruises. Her eyes were dry, but they were still red from very recent crying. "What...happened?"

"Yeah, and where's Will?" Dustin and Lucas had both arrived in the doorway offering Eleven a concerned smile.

There was a dense pause as El looked at each of them in turn, and her fearful eyes seemed to linger on Lucas for a moment longer than the others. "She just showed up here half an hour ago in tears." Nancy began, filling the pause. "She hasn't said a word."

"You can tell us, El." Mike said, taking her hands. "Friends tell each other everything."

"It..." She hesitated again. "It's Will." She seemed to struggle to explain herself, throwing her head up in frustration. "He's not...he changed...black eyes...angry," tears were nudging at the corner of her eyes again, "He...he attacked me, I ran..." She burst fully into tears, and Mike pulled her into another embrace, her head against his shoulder.

"Oh my god." Dustin muttered. "Will isn't Will? What does that mean..."

El's expression was pleading with them, _I've said everything I can, please believe me._

"Whatever it is, we'll figure it out." Lucas said, giving her an encouraging smile. Mike nodded his head slightly in thanks; he knew El was still afraid that Lucas didn't trust her fully. The fact that he believed her would mean a lot.

"Where's mom and dad?" Mike asked Nancy. He got up and fetched a glass of water for El, popping an Eggo into the toaster as well. He was still a little giddy, on an adrenaline high of concern for Will and happiness at finding El safe in his own house. He wasn't sure he'd have survived if something had happened to her. His last words to her were so jealous and cruel.

"They're both helping the search for Chief Hopper." Nancy said. "I think it's pretty serious. Everyone knows he's a troubled guy, so I think they're worried he did something stupid."

"That doesn't sound like Hop." Dustin said as Mike set the plate down in front of El, who tucked in greedily.

"I know."

Xx

Nancy joined the boys in the basement, taking Will's usual seat at the D&D table. El was lying face down on the sofa, her legs dangling off the edge limply.

"So...Will is sick, or something happened to him in the Upside Down..." Dustin had been 'thinking' out loud for the last hour, but his train of thought hadn't even left the station.

"Can you shut the hell up for one minute, please?" Lucas banged his own head against the table in frustration.

"This is hopeless." Mike sighed. They knew Will had been sick – that's why they left him at home the night they went to search for El – but it had seemed like ordinary winter flu, nothing too unusual.

"Hmphl coghfml" They all looked over as a muffled sound came from the couch.

El lifted her head from the pillow. "Cough." She gestured to her mouth. "I saw him..."

She sighed in frustration as they all looked at her with confused expressions. Then Mike watched her face change, and he could tell she was having an idea. She turned away from them for a moment, and then when she turned back she began to act out a coughing fit, doubled over. She opened her mouth and something fell out, rolling across the carpet. It was a Star Wars figurine that must have been lying near the couch.

"Oh!" Lucas shouted. "He threw something up! El saw Will throw something up!"

"Yeah, dipshit, we all get it _now_..." Dustin rolled his eyes.

"What did he throw up, sweetie?" Nancy asked, ignoring the bickering.

"I...don't know." El sighed. "It looked...black, slimey..." She shuddered a little.

"Hmm." Mike looked at the others, not sure what to make of the whole performance.

"Wait!" Lucas jumped out of his seat in excitement, turning to Dustin again. "Remember the Snow Ball?"

Dustin nodded. "Sure..."

"Will ran to the bathroom then as well, right?"

"Shit! Yes..." Dustin slapped Lucas on the back. "We thought he was just nervous about dancing with Jennifer Hayes!"

"Now we just have to figure out what this means..." Nancy said. She glanced at Eleven, who just shrugged.

Mike was thinking hard, his face was all scrunched up and his hand was pinching the bridge of his nose. Somehow this seemed to help channel his best thoughts.

After a long silence, he spoke.

"What if we got it wrong, when we called it the Demogorgon?" He asked. The others looked at him confused. "What if that was the _wrong_ campaign, the _wrong_ monster?"

"Michael..." Nancy sighed. She was using that patronising tone of voice he hated, and he could tell she thought the stress and panic had made him a little insane.

"Dude, what are you talking about?" Dustin added, one eyebrow cocked.

"Bear with me." He got up and reached for bookshelf, picking up his copy of _Gygax's Monster Compendium._

"Look, I know it was just a name, but we called that _thing_ a Demogorgon because it got Will in that campaign we played, but what if that wasn't the right campaign?"

"The _right_ campaign?" Lucas asked incredulously. "Mike, buddy, you're not making any sense..."

"Think about it!" Mike was beginning to get exasperated. He opened up the _Compendium_ and began flicking through. "Is it really anything like the Demogorgon? Read the description..."

He slid the book across to Lucas, who rolled his eyes and began to read aloud. Eleven got up from the couch and walked closer.

" _The Prince of the Demons, or Demogorgon, is an 18 foot tall reptilian creature._

 _It has two primate-like heads which battle each other for dominance of his reptile-like body..."_

"Two heads? Eighteen foot tall? Does that sound like the thing we saw?" Mike interrupted, grabbing the book back.

"No, but Mike, it's just a game..."

"I know that!" He snapped. "But we're talking about alternate dimensions here!" He began flicking through the book again, searching for something. "But I remember Mr. Clarke said once that it's possible that what we do in this dimension could shape another, inter-connected one without us knowing!"

"So you think us playing Dungeons and Dragons somehow created the Upside Down?" Lucas's voice was exasperated, like he knew that even continuing the conversation was wasting more of their time.

"No. Maybe. I don't know." Mike found the page in the book he was looking for. "But what if the campaign that mattered wasn't the one we played last year, but the one we played once Will got back?"

"I'm so lost..." Nancy put her head in her hands.

"What happened in that campaign?" Lucas asked.

"We never finished it!" Dustin sighed. "But..." Mike could tell his brain was whirring, and he hoped Dustin was beginning to follow his logic. "Will got possessed, by a Mind Flayer..."

"Exactly." Mike slid the book back across the table. "Isn't the monster more like _this_?"

Lucas looked at the open page and began to read again.

" _An Illithid, commonly referred to as a Mind Flayer, is a tall humanoid creature._

 _It prefers the dark, avoids sunlight, and its grey-green skin is covered in a film of mucus._

 _On its head is a lamprey-like mouth with four tentacle flaps..."_

There was a picture in the book as well, which Lucas held up to show the others. Nancy gasped audibly. It wasn't a perfect match, but it was chillingly close.

"Keep reading!" Mike sat back in his chair, relieved that at least they no longer seemed to think he had lost his mind.

" _Illithids breed by spawning larvae, which they insert into a carefully selected host creature (usually another humanoid creature, around five to six feet tall) via the mouth or ear._

 _The larvae then mature inside the host. While some may be expelled or destroyed by the host's immune system, the strongest larva will mature until strong enough to attempt to overthrow the host's willpower and seize control of the brain..."_

Lucas paused, interrupted by the sound of Dustin retching.

" _...thus beginning the host's transformation into an Illithid."_

"Oh my god." Nancy was just shaking her head in shock.

"But we killed it, right?" Lucas asked, still staring at the black and white image of the _Illithid_ drawn on the page. "In the campaign, we killed the Mind Flayer!"

"Yeah, but only after it had possessed Will." Dustin sighed. "Just like in real life, we killed the monster after it had taken him."

"Joyce said that when they found Will in the Upside Down he had some strange tube in his throat." Nancy began. "Assuming Mike's theory is right, that must have been how they put those...larvae inside him." She visibly shuddered at the thought. "But what can we do? The book doesn't say anything else!"

"Maybe El could help somehow?" Lucas asked. They all turned to her hopefully.

She looked down at her feet. "I...don't know..." Mike put an arm around her shoulders reassuringly.

"Well whatever we do we have to do it quick." Dustin said, standing up from the table. "It said that the monster has to overthrow the host's willpower."

"He clearly threw a couple of these bastards up, but he's losing the fight..."


End file.
